


V Is For Vorador

by fractalserpentine, HopeofDawn



Series: A Stitch In Time [12]
Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman, Legacy of Kain
Genre: Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-19
Updated: 2011-06-19
Packaged: 2017-10-20 13:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/pseuds/fractalserpentine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raziel's actions have changed the flow of history, and now rebels have kidnapped a still-human Vorador.  Now Raziel must do his best to set the course of history back upon its true path, or risk undoing all he has known ....</p><p><i>Without Vorador, Kain would never have defeated the Pillar Guardians and raised his Empire. Without Vorador, Janos' body would never have been preserved--perhaps, even, Janos would not have lived long enough to meet a wraithly Raziel, without Vorador to divert the attentions of the Sarafan. Without Vorador, could Kain have prevailed against the Hylden at Meridian? Or even lived long enough to see the Pillars fall? Raziel thought it unlikely. He had no particular liking for the creature, but only a fool would deny that Vorador was a linchpin upon which Nosgoth's future turned.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	V Is For Vorador

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of background explanation: this was originally written for a long-running crossover RPG called Multiverse Haven (now sadly defunct). The basic premise of the game was that characters had been pulled from multiple worlds and marked as Chosen, in order to eventually restore a dying multiverse. The main storyline takes place in Nosgoth, however there may be occasional references to characters, magic systems and some borrowed vampire terminology from other canon sources.
> 
> Warning: these are feudal-era vampires, who survive by hunting/taking what they need, and who have also been corrupted by the Taint. There may be references and/or scenes of fairly brutal treatment of humans as slaves/livestock. Such is life in a world where vampires rule ...

The light of day found Raziel winging rapidly north -- he had set no teleportation endpoints in the Ancient's capital, and if Kain had, those mageries were inaccessible to Raziel. Which was yet one more reason to curse Kain's machinations.

Ancients flew behind Raziel, to the right and left, taking advantage of the air disturbed by his passage to glide for long distances between bursts of effort, further buoyed by their own magics. By midday, when the pale and infinite streaks of the Pillars appeared on the horizon to the east, the Ancients' numbers had dwindled to mere dozens. Despite their powers, few were capable of maintaining Raziel's pace. Heavy cloud cover in the afternoon pared their numbers further, for when their wings were wetted with dew, the Ancients tired yet more quickly.

The roads that spooled out far below were as fine in construction, for the most part, as the one the Razielim had traveled just hours ago. But these were far more crowded -- human villages grew more frequent, and larger. The new-greening treetops were rimmed in sunset's oranges by the time the Ancients' capital, Aptera, surrounded by its gilded lake, came into view. Its central tower seemed squat compared with the grace of the Pillars, but was just as pristine. Lights glittered throughout the city; other, redder flames danced on the surface of the water where humans from the surrounding townships paddled their boats to their nightly trawls. There were far fewer of the little vessels than naught but a few years previously.

Raziel frowned down at the human boats, surrounding the Ancient city as they cast nets into the dark water. It was not difficult to see in his mind's eye those boats turned into warships, bristling with armed humans as they surrounded a besieged and dying city ... he shook his head, forcing away the dark thoughts. For all his travels through the Chronoplast, he was no oracle to know the future. Which was likely for the best; Moebius' fate had taught him the folly in relying too much upon such precognition.

His Clan was several nights march behind by now, winding their way to the capital on foot under Anani's watchful eye and the Ancients' guidance. It had been surprisingly difficult to leave them, even for such a short span of time, and Raziel found himself more than once desiring to circle back and assure himself that his surviving Razielim had not somehow vanished like the snows of spring, leaving no trace behind. Each time, Raziel could not help but grimace; how Kain would have mocked him for behaving like a broody hen over a solitary egg! And yet the fear, as unreasonable as it was, could not be banished entirely. Not yet.

The walls of the city were perfunctory things, low and apparently unguarded, as they winged their way overhead. Yet Raziel's sharp eyes could pick out runes inscribed upon those stones, and was somewhat reassured; for all their naivete, it was obvious the Ancients were not completely defenseless. The rest of the city was much the same; shining and almost absurdly clean, its winding avenues and archways only sparsely populated by ebon-winged Ancients compared to the huddled mass of human villages, yet defended by magic, at least, if not by blade.

Raziel trailed the night in his wake as he swept over the city's long, elegant causeways, its curving streets. The air was crisp, and grew warmer as Raziel descended below the level of the tallest buildings, as if the city held and reflected the fading heat of the day. At last the great, central plaza came into view, fringed by the Ancients' now nearly vacant constructions -- ornate tiered apartments of marble and wood -- and adorned at the far end by the tower that housed Janos... and the Reaver.

Strolling Ancients scattered to clear a landing space as Raziel swept lower, bleeding speed with a practiced angling of his wings, followed by a furious backwinging that dislodged in a fine haze the ice crystals that had gathered on the flight surfaces. His escort had fallen somewhat behind -- the Ancients seemed to prefer a smoother, slower descent, and perhaps required more space in which to slow.

Raziel touched down lightly, heavily-booted hooves taking his weight for the first time in nearly twelve hours. Ziliah landed beside him -- somewhat less neatly. She was breathing heavily. "Janos has been informed of your arrival, Divine Benefactor," Ziliah said, stepping forward. She did not entirely comprehend Raziel's haste, for while Vorador had been an enormously valuable smith... he had only been human. "This way, if you will."

A familiar black shape winged toward them, hurtling through the air at great speed. Though, when it alit beside Raziel, it was as lightly as a feather. An eyeblink, and then Tarrant stood there, the protective torque 'round his fragile neck, the only thing standing between him and a truly excruciating immolation.

"My thanks, Ziliah," Raziel said with grim courtesy, following her lead. He was not so distracted, however, as to fail to notice Tarrant's arrival--or Ziliah's weariness. "We have flown fast and far," he said as they mounted the steps of the tower. "You will need rest and sustenance, I expect." He left it as a suggestion, however, and not an order--a politesse extended to few others. To Tarrant he gave only a bare nod of welcome, knowing the Power required no elaborate greeting.

The tower was as open and pristine as it had been upon Raziel's first visit, their steps echoing upon polished stone. He could feel the throb of this era's Reaver blade even now, a subtle keen of hunger, more felt than seen, that resonated within his very bones.

Ziliah paused, searching Raziel's features. "Just as you say," she admitted. There was always the possibility that Raziel might take up the Reaver, and that was an event she would fain miss witnessing. But the chances were, she felt, slim at this juncture -- the Divine One had declined the blade once before. She looked to Raziel's darkmagic construction. It was eerie how lifelike the creature was, with hair like spun sunlight but otherwise as pale as if all true colors had drained from its skin and feathers. At least it was not wearing the fine, spindly digits of a human this time. The golem's roiling cloudlike form did not disturb her -- shapeshifting was not unknown to the Ancients, though it was not thought mete to adopt a form other than the one God intended -- but the vision of a creature with both proper wings *and* all those tiny worm-like fingers was undeniably chilling. "May we offer you respite?" Ziliah asked the Neocount. Bashemath claimed the construction liked to be addressed directly, and the Divine One's companions were due whatsoever indulgence they pleased.

"I have fed already," Tarrant replied pleasantly, "So that we might not tarry longer on my account."

One of the acolytes led Raziel and Tarrant into the cathedral once more. It was unchanged, everything remained just as Raziel recalled, as if the passage of three years had been as nothing to the smooth marble stonework, the delicate murals. Despite the urgency of the report Raziel had received, Ancients strolled the hallways much as they had before, conversing quietly, turning to watch Raziel's passage with keen, but polite, interest. As they walked, Gana quietly moved to pace behind Raziel, just to his left, as if she had never left his side; though she bore her spear, she was dressed like most of the others in white and pale blue. In his battle-scarred armor, Raziel stood out like a bloodstain on silk. Tarrant fit right in, his foppishness put to good use, for once.

The huge central chamber of the temple was this time empty, save for a pair of guards at the entry arch, the ornately cast altar at the center... and the long, thin case atop it. The Reaver rested there, its resonance a throb that seemed to settle along Raziel's spine, a whisper of the consuming void, and of the unnameable. They passed the archway without entering.

At the end of a hallway down which Raziel had never ventured was another shrine, framed on three sides by great panes of stained glass. The panels depicted a familiar motif -- the Hylden's hero and the Ancient's, locked in combat. The light filtering through was ruddy, and faded further with every passing moment. A young-looking Ancient -- he'd remain forever so, now -- paced quietly between braces of candles, lighting each with ritual solemnity

Janos stood at the cloth-draped altar, talons folded over a slim grey stick. The tip smoldered, emitting a thin pale smoke that smelled of nothing so much as the metal and ozone of the Underworld. Janos carefully set the incense in its holder, then turned. His gaze was level and warm, though concern touched his tone as he took in Raziel. "Welcome, my child. Gladdening news has reached me of your Clan's safe arrival."

Raziel bowed deeply; more deeply than he would have offered to any other, save perhaps Kain himself. "Janos," he said, the name an honest benediction. There was something in the sight of the Ancient that allowed him to relax, however minutely. It did not make sense; their meetings thus far had been brief at best, and save for the last, fraught with violence and death. Yet ... Raziel trusted him, more than any other he knew in this world. "I am glad to return, and your people have been most generous in their forbearance." His gaze flickered upwards, to the central mural above Janos. The vampire messiah depicted upon the glass was familiar indeed--a black-winged, silver-haired creature, haloed with light and bearing the Reaver. _Kain ..._

He turned his eyes away, back to Janos' peaceful, oblivious face. "Yet there appear to be ill-tidings upon the wind. I have been told that the smith Vorador has been taken prisoner by his fellow humans." The air was quiet and hushed around the words, the attending Ancient pausing in his duties to glance over his shoulder at Raziel. There had been others taken as well--humans all well-used to dealing with the Ancients--yet humans they were, and it was obvious Raziel's concern over the creatures was beyond his comprehension.

 _You will see Kain again,_ Tarrant Whispered to him alone, as if he might have sensed that particular thought... or perhaps he'd just seen that glance up? _It is not to himself whom he belongs, but to himself._

Janos inclined his head. "Not an uncommon ploy," he said somberly. "Those humans who cooperate are frequently the targets of those who will not. But we have long since ceased acquiescing to insurrectionist demands." Hostage abductions, accordingly, were now infrequent. Instead, rebels tended simply to kill aides outright, a fate which Janos felt Vorador had likely met. The man was an undeniably valuable smith, and age had not yet dulled his skills, but he was... tempestuous. It was unlikely he would work for his abductors.

The entire matter was regrettable. But why had a merely regrettable matter brought the Divine One so far, so fast? For Raziel had clearly traveled hard; the chill of the upper jetstream yet clung to him, and if Janos understood correctly the news from New Avalon, the Divine Benefactor had just arisen from channeling the full energy capacity of an altar. "You need fear not for the Reaver, nor for your kin," said Janos, "for the former is well-protected, and so shall the latter be."

Raziel tilted his head. "I am glad to hear it," he said carefully. The idea that his Razielim required cosseting by the Ancients was patently ridiculous, yet he chose to let it lie. The subject he was about to broach was a delicate one--if Raziel erred in word or deed, he was keenly aware that he risked altering the shape of things to come, especially with the two Reavers in such close proximity!

"Yet that is not why I came. Vorador--is important. Vitally so. We cannot risk his death at the hands of his fellow humans--to do so would unravel the entire skein of history." Without Vorador, Kain would never have defeated the Pillar Guardians and raised his Empire. Without Vorador, Janos' body would never have been preserved--perhaps, even, Janos would not have lived long enough to meet a wraithly Raziel, without Vorador to divert the attentions of the Sarafan. Without Vorador, could Kain have prevailed against the Hylden at Meridian? Or even lived long enough to see the Pillars fall? Raziel thought it unlikely. He had no particular liking for the creature, but only a fool would deny that Vorador was a linchpin upon which Nosgoth's future turned.

"I do not wish to interfere with any reprisals you may have readied against the rebels. In the interests of preserving Vorador's life, however, I would offer my assistance in whatever capacity you require."

Janos' expression betrayed no great dismay, but he gestured minutely to the acolyte near the wall as Raziel spoke. Bowing deeply, the younger Ancient proffered the lamp he carried, then departed, though it was clear he would have preferred to linger. At Janos' nod, the Ancient who had led Raziel to the shrine likewise turned and left; Gana backed out somewhat reluctantly, taking up a post just down the hallway. The sound of footsteps receeded, leaving the three vampires alone in the flickering light. Only then did Janos let out a slow breath, the lamp's small flame held cupped in his talons.

If Janos questioned Raziel's revelation, strange as it surely seemed, it was not apparent. But perhaps he did not; it was not the way of the Ancients to doubt their Gods, after all. "Truly then, this is grave tiding. We believe Vorador dead already, for his captors knew that we would offer no concessions. It is therefore naught but recognition -- and our fear -- they desire. The Council has not seen fit to make martyrs of the misguided."

Vorador ... dead? The thought shot dread through Raziel's heart. Had his entrance in this time allowed this to happen? His claws curled inward tightly at the idea.

Yet ... if Vorador were truly dead, then Kain would hardly have survived his trials. Without Kain, Raziel would have remained a mouldering corpse ... and yet here he still stood. Surely that meant Vorador still lived; or had the Elder God placed his Soul Reaver beyond the grasp of time as well as death? It was a possibility Raziel did not wish to consider. He turned, therefore, to the possibility that he *could* affect--the possibility that Vorador yet survived.

"I believe that Vorador may still live," Raziel said finally, his eyes upon the fragile flame cradled in Janos' hands. "The continued existence of myself and my clan would seem to be proof of it. Your Council is wise in its circumspection; but in this, I cannot stay my hand. I will seek out Vorador--and should the humans stand against me, they will die." Raziel knew well how to deal with martyrs; for even saints required witnesses, did they not?

Janos nodded, slowly. "A regrettable necessity, then," he said. His long feathers rustled as he turned, gazing in contemplation upon one of the great stained glass panels -- or perhaps the huddled human settlements clustered along the lakeside, far beyond the shores of the island city. To Raziel's sharp eyes, tiny points of firelight were visible even through the obfuscating glass and the close glow of the candles. "But of course you shall have whatsoever aid we may provide. Our scryers determined some hours ago that Vorador was still within the city, but were not able to say precisely where." Janos' mouth tightened a little -- such incapacity was surely not usual. "And he may have since been moved."

A stirring from Gana alerted Raziel to a new arrival, though his ears surely caught the tread in the hallway of boots heavier than Ancients normally wore. "You know that isn't likely," Shamgar growled as he walked in without announcement, settling the butt of the spear he carried solidly against the marble floor. Heartseeker's hunger, the fury of its entrapped soul, was a low whisper against Raziel's consciousness, a pale echo of the Reaver's scream. The Conflict Guardian was tense with frustrated fury, his nod of greeting was nothing more than perfunctory, even towards Raziel. "They would select a place close to fields of magical interference, and would not move him from it. Give the word, Janos, and I can have the city turned inside out in two hours."

Raziel was pleased to see that Shamgar, at least was not averse to action; though it was difficult to say whether that was due to the affront against the Ancients or simply his own nature as the avatar of Conflict. Still, he would make a good ally.

"Fields of magical interference .... are there many such?" Raziel asked, eyes narrowed as he thought. "The Spirit Forge of course, would be one, but I am sure it is well-guarded ... Would there be any others, perhaps in areas less-frequented by Ancients?" Humans were notoriously good at concealing warrens in the unlikeliest of places ....

Gana stirred uncertainly, her eyes flickering between Raziel and the two Guardians. It was hardly her place to speak out of turn amongst such august personages, but .... " ... what of the Hylden magics, my lords? Could ... some remnant of theirs be used to foil our search?" she offered tentatively.

Shamgar glanced up and turned, startled, as if he had not noticed Gana, or had registered her only in passing. His mouth tightened a little. "They could, provided any remained," he said in correction, though with the Ancients' typical gentleness. The guardswoman had more than her share of burdens -- for all knew her indebtedness to the Divine One. She would not be released from her duties, would not be permitted to return to God, until Raziel willed. And that... might not be for some time.

The Conflict Guardian glanced to Janos. His talons tightened on his spear. "You know where I wish to search."

Janos lifted a hand in an abrupt cutting motion -- a harsh gesture, for him -- and spoke a few rapid words in the lilting tongue of the Ancients.

Raziel was adept in languages, having watched the evolution of many tongues through the slow centuries of his existence--but even he could not learn the Ancient tongue in so brief a time. Still, he was keen-witted enough to notice the name within Janos' incomprehensible words. "Chaika?" he said, frowning. "What has he to do with this?" Surely the Death Guardian would not be fool enough to ally with humans?

Gana shifted uneasily, but bowed her head beneath Shamgar's reprimand. She had heard rumors ... but surely the Guardian of Conflict knew better than she!

Shamgar turned to Raziel, ignoring Janos' sharp look. "Not all Guardians are pleased with the happenings of the past three years." He paused. "Nor, I think, by your return."

"That is sufficient, Shamgar," said Janos, quietly, the lampflame flickering between his talons. The creation of the Pillars -- and the Guardians -- was one of the last of the Ancients' acts guided by the hand of God. Infighting now, in front of the Divine Benefactor, was worse than unseemly; it verged on blasphemous. "You both serve God in word and in deed. You may differ with him in opinion, but your aspersions are groundless."

Janos and Shamgar both, Raziel thought, were too quick to make assumptions. He would need to speak with Gana later, and alone, as Whispers no longer sufficed to keep secrets in the company of the Ancients. "Regardless," he interjected smoothly, "Search we must. And if we do not know where our quarry resides, then we must pick up the trail at its beginning." He turned to Shamgar. "Do we know where Vorador was waylaid? Failing that, where does the smith reside?" Raziel knew well Vorador's scent--but the scent he knew was that of an ancient vampire, steeped in blood and the swamp. That of a living Vorador was likely to be quite different--and while Raziel was not about to resort to sniffing along the ground like a hunting hound, it was only prudent to begin with whatever traces the human abductors left behind.

He glanced briefly at Tarrant, wondering if the Power's abilities extended to scrying past the rebels' defenses. It seemed likely; but if the alien vampire did not see fit to offer, Raziel would not petition him. In truth, he sometimes felt they had relied too heavily upon Tarrant's many talents in their long journey to this time. Each time, it had been prudent, necessary ... and yet, it still felt like weakness.

Shamgar nodded firmly, seeming glad to concentrate on something other than Janos' quiet displeasure. "He was taken from his forge complex," he said. "And the only reasons we presume the humans complicit are the signs there, left for us." As he spoke, he offered up a series of images, pausing after each, that they might be examined in detail. The touch of Shamgar's mind was steely, solid, but heated with constrained fury. The first sending was of the exterior of the forge -- a sprawling, open series of buildings, the architecture modified with a heavy hand to fit human requirements. It was a section of the city which Raziel recognized, for he had passed over many times. The next displayed the huge, rolling-sheetmetal doors to the largest, central structure. The next was a private forge in very unseemly disarray, implements and tools scattered, vats of tempering liquids overturned. There were bodies, as well. Three forge assistants, all human, lay dead; one had been impacted by a heavy, crushing weapon, the others had been garroted. And finally, a bare brick wall. Blood had been splashed against it, smeared by a five-fingered hand to write a crude invective against the Ancients. Shamgar's voice was hard. "It need not have been human rebels, but rather someone... impersonating them." As the conflict guardian knew full well, there was nothing in the world that could unite a populace under one leader quite so well as fear.

"An Ancient?" Raziel asked with a sharp look. "Or is there some human ruler who believes he will claim a fief over the bodies of your people?" He considered the images for a moment, thinking. "What of the Time Guardian, Elon? Does he know aught of this event?" For all the power the Pillar Guardians had at their disposal, they seemed most ... ineffective. Was that due to Janos' command, or for another reason?

"Most guardians believe the humans pose little threat. Chaika, conveniently, does not. If the rebels appear to be a greater threat than they are, sufficiently to rouse fear amongst our people, he stands to gain much influence," Shamgar explained bluntly. "Or rather, regain it. The necessities of preparing for your clan's arrival have delayed the return to God for many -- and will likely continue to delay them in the future."

Janos said nothing; he turned away, moved to light the candles ensconced on the wall. He could little prevent the airing of Shamgar's concerns -- and perhaps the telling of them would ease the Conflict Guardian's mind. "Elon has continued to receive prophesy of Vorador," he said at last, in response to Raziel's query. "But as usual, the signs are conflicted and equivocal... and, in some cases, impossible." No human would survive centuries into the future, after all....

"Impossible?" Raziel echoed quizzically. It seemed that the Ancients had been unable to see the ascendance of their human-born descendants--descendants in blood and power, at least, if not in life. "There is little in the world that is impossible, from what I have seen." He turned his gaze to Shamgar. "I have no wish to cause dissension among the Ancients, but you, Shamgar, are the Guardian of Conflict; you know your domain better than any other. If you believe Chaika may be involved in this, I shall not gainsay you." Though nor would he act upon Shamgar's suspicions without a great deal more consideration. "Let us look, then, to Vorador's forge for our answers--perhaps there may yet be signs that have eluded less careful eyes." Inclining his head politely to Janos, Raziel turned, suiting action to words.

Janos returned the farewell, bowing, as Shamgar and Gana turned to follow Raziel. In his hands, the lamplight flickered.

 

****

 

The passage to the forge complex was made swiftly. Vorador's forge was unmistakable -- though the surrounding city was but scantily lit, magelights glowing in clusters that covered no more than a quarter of the metropolis, the smithy was brilliantly illuminated. Work in varying stages of completion lay about the open courtyards, massive rolls of wire, great piles of sheetmetal, twisted contraptions and tools of every sort laying where workers had abandoned them. With the great sintering and smelting machines -- many of them marked with the Hylden's green glyphs -- silent and still, the smithy had already gathered an air of neglect, of absence.

Raziel had paused only to set a teleportation endpoint at the cathedral. Now, having entered the human Vorador's domain, he stopped short, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath. There were many scents, most familiar and expected--dust, straw, the pervasive scent of metal and rust and oiled leather. The ashy scent of guttering forge-fires, a confused swirl of human scents .... and blood.

Opening his eyes, Raziel followed that scent, letting it lead him to where the ambush had taken place, oblivious to the puzzled look exchanged between Gana and Shamgar. Tarrant, as always, was imperturbable. The layout of the forge had an uncanny familiarity to it; one Raziel found himself hard-pressed to place until he came to the heart of the structure, and realized that he *had* been here before, millennia in the future. Then, little more than broken walls had been left of Vorador's forge--and certainly nothing to identify it as such.

The humans had obviously made some attempt to clean the gore from the room when they had retrieved their dead. But the blood still lingered, the dry, rusty-iron smell embedded in the crevices between flagstones, on the instruments and the very grime of this place. To Raziel, it spoke most eloquently. "Your people found three humans dead, correct?" He closed his eyes again, focusing upon the scents of death and fear and blood. Vorador would not have been among the dead--which meant his was one of the other still-living traces. The reek of fear and anger within the room made it difficult to distinguish them, however. "Does Vorador have a favored weapon, or tool? Even a piece of clothing would suffice."

Shamgar shook his head. He had followed Raziel, watching closely. The scent of blood hung thick in the air, tangible as a haze, a miasma of indiscernable scents, darkly alluring. He little beliked being at the site of human death, nor did any other Ancient. It reminded them too fiercely of what they now were. "Attempts at scrying -- even by those who are masters in the art -- have not proved fruitful."

Gana had turned away promptly at Raziel's directive, finding a fire-scarred human attendant and conveying the request. The forge apprentice did not take long -- he returned with a heavy brocade coat which had been thrown across a cooling rack nearby. The garment did not seem to fit its surroundings; it was heavily embroidered with metallic thread, the pile of the fabric very deep, the color a royal purple. Bowing deeply, he silently presented it to Raziel.

Presented with the evidence of the human Vorador's sartorial excesses, Raziel's lips twitched a little as he took the garment. "Ever the peacock, eh, you old goblin?" he murmured to himself. Switching to an older tongue for his companions' sake, he slanted a glance at Shamgar. "I assure you, nothing so esoteric as scrying is my aim. I simply wish to make certain of the man's scent." He lifted the fabric closer to his face, though he was hardly so crass as to bury his nose in it, and inhaled deeply. The scent was well worn into the coat: human sweat and remnants of soot, and underneath it ... Vorador. Lighter, less musky and weathered than he had known it, but still containing the same tang of steel and water.

Handing the coat back to the waiting human, he tilted his head at Gana and Shamgar. "Do you already know Vorador's scent, then?"

Shamgar tilted his head, frowning. He knew, of course, that the scent of one human ofttimes differed from that of another. Some were pleasant, many not, some sickly. But something in the way the Chosen asked his question intimated that Raziel did not ask after Vorador's state of health. But perhaps the translation was a poor one -- this was neither his first language, nor, presumably, Raziel's. "I... have met Vorador," Shamgar said, brow furrowing, mouth a little tight. While he little liked to gainsay the Divine One, he was at a loss as to why Raziel would waste his time -- and Shamgar's -- in such an odd game. Shamgar needed to be readying the search parties, pouring over the maps of Chaika's known holdings, cajoling the scryers to greater effort... any number of things. But this? "He is obstinate and intractable, but talented. Still... I feel it likely that he was taken not for his skills, but for his place in Janos' regard."

Gana simply shook her head, for she could not have distinguished Vorador's scent amongst those of other humans, let alone the miasma of blood and death that still clung to the room.

Raziel had intended to proffer the coat to his companions as well, but their incomprehension gave him pause. Could it be that the Ancients could not distinguish one scent from another? It was a strange deficiency, if so ... "Janos regards him well, then?" he said mildly instead, giving himself time to think. He walked unerringly to where the human corpses had lain. Their scents, even fouled by death, were unmistakable--and Vorador's as well. "The struggle began here, I believe," he murmured, indicating a sturdy workbench upon which the scattered remnants of some armor-joint lay abandoned. "Vorador, and one of the dead humans were here for some time. There is another scent--" he paced to a back doorway. "--male, human. He entered from the rear, with others." There were too many overlapping scents at the doorjamb, old and new, to know yet just how many others.

"They struggle, moving here, and here ..." Raziel retraced the progress of the battle with slow steps, pausing to inhale the acrid mingled remnants of fear and fury. "The other two dead join now--nearby apprentices, perhaps. They rush in, are overwhelmed; fall there and there. The first of Vorador's companions has already been slain, closer to the forge. Then only Vorador remains--Vorador and at least four strangers. One is wounded, angry." Raziel could taste the rusty iron scent of the man's blood on the back of his tongue, still-living, fresher than that of the new-made corpses. "They all have the stink of outlaws--hungry and resentful. They are young, male--none past their prime, or ill. Whether they were the pawns of another remains to be seen."

He turned again, following the faint traces of bloodsmell and Vorador's rage. It led towards the wagon-entrance, and around to the rear of the complex. "What path could a group have chosen from here that would allow them to conceal a captive from prying eyes?" he asked Shamgar and Gana.

Shamgar shook his head. "Janos regards the Reaver well. Vorador is merely... privileged." It was unseemly to suggest that Janos had particular love for a single human. Shamgar knew full well that some among his kind became fonder of their servants than could be admitted in polite company, treating them as something more than the clever animals they were. Vorador, of course, was an exceptionally clever specimen of his kind, and therefore worthy of exceptional treatment. He wanted for nothing, unlike the ever-increasing human populations of the surrounding villages -- a fact which Chaika surely would exploit to incite rage. But Vorador's place in Janos' regard was not a high one, not exactly.

The Conflict Guardian lifted a hand and drew breath, as if he would add more or explain further, but paused as Raziel stalked unerringly to where the first of the bodies had been found, and began to speak. His first few deductions could have been obtained from the disarray around him, but past those.... Shamgar listened with increasing amazement. "What mageries do you employ to determine the sequence of the attackers with such certainty?" he asked finally, following as Raziel sought out the trail. "Have you enhanced your own sense of smell?"

Gana simply shadowed Raziel quietly, and when he reached the gate, assisted the human forge workers to roll the big set of doors open. For all her slightness, she handled her half of the gate as easily as did the two burly mortals. Outside the brightly lit complex, the city was dim, huddled, quiet. Some of the Ancients' elegant structures in this area had been modified -- walls broken down in places, the rubble crudely formed into stairways or used to block up doorways too wide for human sensibilities. Rough-cut wood planks had been used to fashion ramshackle buildings: a cooking shack, latrines, a stable where a horse whickered nervously as it picked up on the presence of undead.

Gana returned to Raziel's side in time to hear his question. She spread a taloned hand in illustration towards the human quarter. "Few come here now, save for keeping the cleansing glyphs to be functioning," she said. Her high common had improved a little over the past three years.

Shamgar nodded. "There is little chance anyone would espy them from the ground," he said. "But from the air...." Many of the broad avenues were just as the Ancients had built them. But, sharply to the right, the alley stretching along the wall of the forge was choked with laundry, fluttering on lines, overhead. The clothing had not been taken in.

"Ah, I gather your meaning," Raziel said, looking at that concealing cloth. "I am unused to thinking of watchers in the sky." He headed down the alley, slipping between lines of ragged human clothing silently, his face predatory and intent. "There is no magic in my ability to scent my prey, save for that of my making," he said in answer to Shamgar's earlier question. "What kind of hunter would I be with ears and nose as useless as those of a human?" The local human peasants had obviously heard of their approach--there was no activity in the alley, and he could sense wary eyes watching them from behind shutters.

To this, Shamgar made no answer. The alley was choked with new construction, passages breaking off, joining. From time to time the space opened up onto small plazas around dead fountains; these clearings too were strung with fluttering, obfuscating cloth and rope. There was none of the usual trash and burnpiles that normally marked human habitation -- the wards that kept the rest of the city pristine clearly functioned in this area, too. Scent was more difficult to follow here, where a fresh breeze has scoured away the traces of passage. Shamgar and Gana both used their spears to push aside low-hanging sheets of fabric, making space for the bulk of their wings, rather than slipping between the dusty clothing. After close to a quarter hour of rapid travel, Shamgar paused at one junction. "There," he said shortly, gesturing with the tip of his weapon down an unremarkable corridor, above which delicate stonework arches bridged. A streak of blood, dried brown and now very faded -- the gradual work of the cleansing wards -- marked where someone had leaned against the wall.

Raziel bent downward, touching the dried blood-smear with the tips of his claws. "Yes," he affirmed. "The scent is the same." His focus captured by the evidence of wounded prey, he did not notice or wonder at Shamgar's apparent short temper. He started down the corridor, his eyes upon the ground and the walls for any further traces. The activity of the day since the abduction and the cleansing wards themselves had done their part to obscure any trail left behind, however, and at the end of the corridor Raziel found a dead-end--a tiny cobblestoned plaza, the sky oddly obscured by overhanging awnings and elegant buttresses, the stink of human habitation evident. The plaza was empty--any humans that had business here had fled at their approach, it seemed, rough wooden doors and shuttered windows turning their blank faces to the vampiric interlopers.

"Damnation," Raziel muttered under his breath. "I was afraid of this." The humans might as well have sprouted wings like the Ancients and flown away, for all the good the scent-trail would do him now.

Gana frowned, looking about the place. "My lord ... my--my kin lived near here." Family now all dead, returned to God's embrace. She swallowed away the old sorrow and longing, and determinedly continued. "There were no humans or their huts then, of course, but ... this does not seem quite the same as I remember it." She took a few more steps into the courtyard, turning slowly as she tried to figure out where the differences lay.

Determining the changes was no simple matter. The humans had modified far more of the city than was evident from above. Not only had the openings been tightened to suit creatures most comfortable in hidden, enclosed spaces, but much of the distinguishing woodwork had been stripped from the stone, perhaps to be burned in cookfires, the faded burn scars of which still lingered in places. But it was clear which construction was the Ancients' and which the humans' -- and just there, had there not been a fine, muraled panel? Surely there had been, yet now there was nothing but a mudded brick wall, set further back, boards roughly covering gaping holes in the barrier. "There, perhaps," said Gana, frowning in consideration. The white of the Ancients' garments seemed to glow in the filtered starlight. She started forward to examine the place more closely.

Something creaked, very softly -- a loose shutter... or the string of an arbalest being winched back.

Raziel's keen ears picked up the sound, and he growled low in his throat. The sound was raw, a primitive warning rumble that contrasted oddly against the civilized appearance of his companions. He had suspected they were being watched ....

Stepping forward, he listened intently for any further betraying sounds, and heard nothing but silence. Setting talons into one of the boards in the wall, he ripped it free with a screech of nails and splintering wood--and found darkness beyond, leading downward. "Is this what you remember, then?" he asked Gana.

Gana blinked in surprise, craning her neck to peer into the dark opening. The passage was cramped, low, jagged with broken masonry, and sloped steeply downwards. She stepped forward, put a hand on the scarred, baked-mud bricks. "No. This is quite new." The air that issued from the rough-hewn tunnel was so thick with the scent of human sweat, even Gana could taste it -- but under that, there was something... metal and chemical both, something oddly sterile, yet resonant with dormant magics. She lifted her hand, and a glow formed in the hollow of her palm, illuminating the tunnel... and casting herself and Raziel both in a dim, cool light.

From his position, where he lounged casually against an elegant pillar at the throat of the plaza, Tarrant watched the unfolding furor.

Fletching hissed in the air, a brittle sound, Gana jerked back with a hiss, the light in her hand flashing a confusion of shadow and light. The heartbeats Raziel could sense suddenly sped as the hidden humans leapt to their feet, scattering or moving to attack -- there were too many to track accurately. Another bolt shot through the air, and struck the ground with a clatter as Shamgar batted it reflexively away with the broad blade of his spear even as he wheeled, dropping into a crouch.

It seemed that humans never changed, no matter the century. Raziel ducked as another quarrel whizzed through the air, snarling as it ricocheted off his armor. He stepped forward, shoving Gana to the side. Throwing out a hand before him, he loosed a telekinetic bolt at their unseen attackers. The invisible attack was effective, even ill-aimed; there was a resounding crash and a cry from within the tunnel, accompanied by a great cloud of dust and the pounding of feet. Raziel lunged forward, into the dimness as he pressed the advantage; relying upon nose and ears for warning in the choking dust.

"Divine One!" came the cry from behind as Gana struggled to catch up, her wings hampering her in the narrow space. She was supposed to be the protector, not the protected!

A flash of movement, and Raziel caught the stab of a blade--ill-cared for, from the smell of rust upon it--upon one gauntleted forearm. The blade screeched against armor, and catching his attacker's arm, Raziel raked talons down the man's face and throat. It was a messy kill, but sufficient, the human crumpling with a gurgling cry. A falling piece of stonework crashed nearby as he pushed onward, guided by the other humans' cries of fear and anger.

Raziel cut a swath through the tunnel's defenders, gore churning the dust to hot red mud underfoot. Dust swirled so thick, even the screams echoed madly, dying reverberations in the dark. Tunnels had surely been wormed throughout the bowels of the Ancient's city, for there were other passages down which sound rebounded and did not escape.

Gana's light surrounded her in white; her field of vision was less than five feet before and behind. To either side and above, the bones of the earth pressed close, bending and breaking feathers, pushing against her wings, until she longed only to spead them wide, as if she could shake off the tunnel itself. The tip of a sword lunged from the swirling dust of a side passage, and she parried it awkwardly, the butt of her spear cracking against the stone walls. The unarmored human, though, was as blind as she, and all but turned in to her counterstrike. Expression twisted in distaste, Gana dragged her weapon -- the shaft aflame with exultation -- free of the dying body.

Abruptly, the passage disgorged Raziel into a chamber very different from the human-hewn tunnel. The walls were unnaturally smooth, seamless, and had been carved from floor to great, arched ceiling... in glowing glyphs of green.

Raziel hissed as the inimical magic of the Hylden glyphs hit, searing over skin and prickling down his very bones. The wards were well-crafted against vampirekind, yet seemed to be more defensive then offensive in nature. He could feel the magic pushing him backwards, blinding his senses to the quarry he sought within--but there was none of the green hellfire he had come to dread. And there was no mistake--the Hylden might have once crafted the wards, but it was the humans who used them now; ragged, feral men with crossbows and swords brought to bay, and behind them ... Vorador.

Bloodied and wrapped in chains, the smith was unmistakably alive. He was also unmistakably human; had Raziel been allowed the time, he would have marveled at the man's utterly unremarkable human features, so different from those of the ancient creature he had known. Such considerations would have to wait, however; as the balance of power between vampire attackers and human defenders had now most certainly shifted in favor of the latter. While the Hylden glyphs could not keep them at bay forever, it would take only a single slice of a knife across Vorador's throat, and their battle would be lost.

Gana stumbled through the broken opening, narrowly missing Raziel. Never before had she seen so many Hylden wards in one space -- every surface, every alien arch and jointed column, crawled with them, even the oddly ribbed and textured floor seemed as if it would throw her off if it could. The disorientation was like a blow to the head, the nausea staggering. In the dim green glow of the place, the very walls seemed to be moving, repulsive.

If the sight of Raziel had given the rebels pause, Gana's entry startled them out of it. A crude barricade had been formed -- hastily, for cards and tankards were scattered around the overturned table -- and now men laid their crossbows over the top, taking aim. Screaming in desperate fury, a dozen armed and armored men raced forward, their swords and long knives, however motley, granting them a far longer reach than Raziel's talons.

Vorador, chained to a Hylden workbench, was left unguarded behind the crude palisade. But his struggles in response to the furor were weak, abortive, lacking the incensed rage that had characterized his scent from the day before.

In the midst of the chaos, Tarrant's Whisper was cool, quite calm. _There is an assault from the surrounding habitations. We are holding them._ There would be no attack from the rear... but also no reinforcements.

 _Understood._ Raziel's acknowledgment was brief, the touch of his mind equally calculating as he engaged the first of his attackers. Raziel was Kain's First Lieutenant; and he had earned that title in battle a thousand times over before the Empire was ever born. Sword-steel screeched against talons as he batted the strike aside and gutted the man, who wore only a haphazard collection of leather- and ringmail as armor. It proved a poor defense; he threw his screaming victim into the press of attackers, disengaging his talons in a spray of crimson gore.

"Fire!" came the cry from behind the makeshift wall. Bolts flew into the air in a ragged volley, all aimed at the vampire interlopers within the humans' midst. Raziel threw up one hand, instinctively casting a Wall between themselves and the attack--only to have the glyphs upon the walls seize upon the magic and twist it awry. Snarling, Raziel ducked, throwing up a gauntleted arm to shield his face. Bolts flew wide or rebounded off of armor, but not all. Two sank into the exposed flesh of his chest and stomach; behind him, Gana gave a sharp cry of pain. The humans shouted in savage triumph upon seeing their wounds.

The bolts struck more than their intended victims -- the press of bodies in the chamber was too thick, the light too faint, to target entirely accurately -- but the roar of triumph drowned out the more pedestrian cries of wounded men. Others, shielded however inadvertently by the shredded corpse of the first man to engage Raziel, struggled to free themselves of the still-twitching body. Another slipped in the blood as he lunged forward, his leather boots unable to provide the purchase of serrated hooves. The neglect-stiffened leather that clad the rebel's bodies smelled, even in the press and the furor, of lake and fish.

The barbed tip of the bolt that struck Gana -- specifically chosen for the damage they could cause to tender-skinned, flying beings -- had found the soft flesh of one wing, sinking deep between the feather shafts. Despite her training, she flinched, swinging to her right, the blade of her spear flashing through the air to keep her assailants at bay. Her wings buffeted wide as if she could cast off the sudden agony.

Raziel, struck by one of those flailing wings, snarled reflexively as he tried to straighten, ignoring the bolts embedded deep within his flesh. "Hold fast," he barked, his tone hard as iron. "Your wound is hardly mortal!" Unlike, for instance, Raziel's own--or they would have been, were he not a vampire. Wrapping a taloned hand around the bolt in his chest, he jerked it free with a low grunt, ignoring the white-hot stab of pain. One of the humans had managed to fight free of the encumbering weight of his comrade's corpse and attacked, spear jabbing forward; Raziel backhanded the rough-edged blade to one side, then drove the bloodied bolt into the man's chest, sending him to his knees. Unlike himself, the human was not likely to survive such a wound; a gory symmetry that Raziel could not help but find appropriate.

Kicking his victim aside, he threw himself into the fray once again, vaguely aware of Gana struggling to hold her ground at his back. There was little time to coddle the Ancient's shortcomings, however ... distance favored the human's tactics, not their own, especially in the absence of magic. Far better to close into the mob, and teach them the peril in attacking a creature well armed--not only with talons and fangs, but also the strength to crush mortal bone and flesh. Gore slickened the stones of the floor, splattering thickly enough to cast a crimson haze to the Hylden glyphs' virulent green glow. Ripping out the throat of a particularly foolish attacker who had thought to leap upon him from the rear, Raziel forged his way inward, fangs bared in a hunting snarl.

Unable to keep up with Raziel through the press of blades and bodies, not even certain of the information her glyph-hazed senses were conveying -- the Divine One seemed to think nothing of catching descending swords, barehanded! -- Gana clung to Raziel's order, every bit as strident as any drillmaster's. The agony was as intense as any she'd experienced, was made worse by the sickening green incandescence that turned her spilled blood black, but like many of her kind, she was well-accustomed to following divine order, to clinging to a purpose. Folding her damaged wing behind her as best she was able, lest the broad surface draw more bolts, she parried a javalin that sought her skin, then drove the butt of her spear into the chest of a man who had circled behind her. Despite the press, she abandoned not her place -- for if she did, how then would Raziel retreat once he had gained his prize?

Shouting, the crossbowmen scrambled from their placements as it became clear that Raziel was aiming towards them -- and the prisoner behind them. One after another blade-wielding insurgent fell before Raziel, and their fellows hesitated before closing with him. But then one rebel, wearing a ragged chainmail shirt rather than leather, shouted for pikes, and with surprising alacrity, the men obeyed. Slowly, in the chaos of battle, a phalanx began to form, long-bristling spears better suited for surface combat brought to bear in the shadows.

Raziel first instinct was to take to the air--to use his wings to leap beyond their haphazard line, and thusly gain the advantage. Yet such a tactic was better suited to an open battlefield, not the relatively tight confines of this underground chamber. Worse, he did not doubt that the humans would be well prepared for such an attack; these enemies were far more accustomed to the prospect of aerial foes.

No. He would not risk his wings and his advantage thus. Instead he ripped open the interdimensional portal in which he stored blood glyphs and other supplies.

To the humans, it happened too fast to register. One moment those crimson-dripping talons were empty, the vampire held at bay ... and in the next, cruelly barbed, razor edged discs were slicing through the air and into their midst, flung with inhuman speed and precision. The Hylden glyphs did their best to warp the bloodmagic instilled within the flays, yet in the end it did little more than blunt the edges of their power. Several soldiers ducked to no avail and died, blown into scraps of meat and bone as the flays did their grisly work. Unlucky others found themselves missing arms, legs or other body parts as they were hit, the Hylden glyphs twisting what would have been killing strikes into maiming wounds. Mortal wounds, still ... but not before limbs and entrails were strewn before their owners' horrified eyes.

The ragged defense disintegrated under the assault; the chamber's confines became a charnel house, screams echoing, metal clashing upon stone as weapons were dropped from ragged-stripped hands. The impromptu leader was caught mid-cry, his fist lifted in rage -- the brutal little scraps of metal scythed through chain links, flesh, and bone with equal ease, separating the three in splashes of blood and thicker things. The horror was every bit as potent a weapon as the flays, for stripped of their commander and trapped in a room with a creature beyond any mortal reckoning, those humans still able to run -- or to crawl -- did so.

The way out was not an easy one. The chamber had but one apparent entrance, guarded by flashing spear. Though Gana flinched from the screams, from the gory rain of giblets and hot red paste that stained her ceremonial robes and slicked her decorative armor, her own expression was not of horror. With the first breath she drew, another sensation overrode the nausea caused by the surrounding glyphs, the panic and pain of her own injuries: hunger.

Shivering with the first symptoms of a fledgling's bloodrage, Gana fought wildly.

The crossbowmen -- what remained of them -- were the farthest from the Ancient, closest to Raziel, and to the bound prisoner. Cornered, hopeless, two of them seemed struck at once by the same idea. Drawing daggers, they darted for Vorador.

Raziel had delayed only just long enough to let the flays do their bloody work; but those few moments proved costly nonetheless. The haphazard wall of spears and swords had dissolved before him as he flung himself forward, into the midst of his retreating enemies. Even with the humans thoroughly routed, however, the press of bodies was too thick, impeding his progress. His gaze fell upon Vorador--who now had been wrenched upright, his throat bared by two of his captors as they prepared to deny the vampires their victory in the only way that remained to them.

"No!" Raziel flung out crimson-dripping talons, and released a telekinetic bolt at the would-be assassins. The wave of force was precise, invisible, and with all the force of Raziel's focus and rage. Its backwash sent nearby humans toppling and shook the very walls, the glyphs flickering under the impact.

But it was not quite enough.

The bolt hit true, slamming the humans backward. The man about to slit Vorador's throat was picked up and flung bodily into a nearby column with the audible crack of breaking bone, the dagger spinning away to be lost in the shadows of the room. But the other--the other, while knocked off his feet, maintained his hold upon his chosen victim and his weapon. Pale and sweating with fear, the man seized his chance--and drove his dagger into Vorador's chest.

The world twisted sickeningly.

For an instant the chamber seemed rocked by an earthquake, by a cave-in, for the walls bulged madly. The floor heaved. But neither the fleeing humans, who scrambled for salvation in the gloom, nor Gana, who felled them with fangs savagely gaping and face bloodied, stumbled... or even noticed.

The dislocution abruptly faded, the chamber righted itself for a split second -- and then the vertigo returned, worse than before. The rhythm was a pounding heartbeat, pumping a sense of doom like molten lead.

Vorador was necessary to the course of history. Vorador lay dying. Raziel knew this, knew this cusp, this reshuffling: nascent paradox.

"No!" Raziel lunged, stumbling as reality flexed around them. Vorador's assassin died between one heartbeat and the next; he tore out the man's throat with a single slash of a taloned hand, leaving only the half-severed cord of the spine holding the head upon the new-made corpse as it fell.

Made clumsy by his own dismay as much as the warping of time, Raziel fell to his knees, carefully turning over Vorador's bound form. Bloody froth bubbled over the man's lips as the smith gasped vainly for air, the blade still impaled deep within his chest. Raziel was no healer--but he had seen many wounds over the centuries, more than a few made by his own hand. Vorador's wound was mortal--removing the blade would only hasten his death.

There was no time for thought. Raziel gathered up the dying man, unheeding of talons that tore blood-stained clothing as he wrapped his power about them both, uncaring of the cost--

\--and with a flash of light, the bloodstained floor was suddenly empty.

 

***

 

Half a city away, Raziel's cry cut through the midst of the panicked cries of the Ancients and the keening of the Reaver, echoing through the vaulted halls.

"Janos!"

A sharp crack accompanied the rending of the air, the blue-hot gash of magic that parted the fabric between spaces, and underlaid Raziel's roar with thunder, echoing upon the marble stonework. A acolyte -- the same that had attended Janos just an hour ago -- came to a dead stop, eyes wide, wings half spread, caught between fight or flight.

Splashed in crimson and spattered viscera, eyes ablaze with fury and desperation, Raziel was like something cut straight from the cloth of nightmares. His every step left a perfect hoofprint etched in blood, the trail of a demon prince; his shoulder cape and the jerking body, bound in his arms, both dripped carmine.

"...with the Reaver, Divine One!" the acolyte managed, pointing the way towards the nearby archway to the cathedral's great central apse, and then shrank back as Raziel swept past him like a stormfront.

The Reaver's resonance was a physical presence, cutting the waves of dislocution as a ship's prow broke through rough waters. The piercing wail was clearly audible to more than Raziel, for other ceremoniously robed Ancients were rushing to where Janos stood before the blade's altar, their expressions tense with anxiety, their feathers ruffled with their haste. They scattered like ravens before their divine benefactor.

Janos turned at their startled cries, the Reaver bare and glistening in its case behind him while the world seemed to warp around it. "Raziel?"

Raziel stopped before him, Vorador's shuddering body cradled carefully in his arms. The human's heart was giving out--he could hear its rhythm falter and slow as if it were his own. Vorador's visage was that of a dying man; lips and fingers were tinged blue underneath the spattered blood, and his eyes rolled upward, blind to the events that transpired about him.

They had only moments before Vorador's soul was irretrievably lost.

"For the sake of us all, he cannot be allowed to die, Janos!" Reality shivered around them as if it too were dying, twisting around their tableau in vertiginous waves. "You must share with him your blood, Janos, and call his soul," Raziel continued urgently, uncaring of how he might offend the Ancients about them. He knelt, offering his unlovely and precious burden. "If you do not, then the vampire race will die stillborn, and the future with it!"

Ancients, some of them Guardians, gasped in horror, recoiling physically as Raziel's words registered -- with all their implications. "No! We cannot! This is heresy, it must not be permitted!" the cries and gasps rang out, overlapping, a cacophany. Others spoke more moderately, though no less emphatically, striving to be heard: "Let us discuss this, Janos!" and "Please! Can this sacrifice not fall on another?"

Janos gave ear to none, he did not hesitate. His gaze met Raziel's, the sudden steel in his eyes hinting at the endurance that would carry him through millenia of solitary guardianship... and a remainder that purest faith sometimes required a corresponding strength of acceptance. He sank to his knees, wings spreading for balance, a glossy black mantle. He looked not upon the dying mortal, the rich-scented blood that coated Vorador liberally. "What," Janos breathed, "do I do?"

To Raziel, raising a fledge from a dying human was as easy as killing one--yet he also remembered how it was at first, the uncertainty and the determination that had preceded the creation of his firstborn.

"Blood calls to blood," Raziel said, willing Janos to understand. "Press upon Vorador a measure of your blood, no matter how small. The blood is the connection through which you can hold fast his soul--you will feel it once the link has been forged, as if it were a moth fluttering in your hands." The description was apt, for the making of a vampire was a delicate process. Too little power, and the soul would slip free into the Elder God's maw; too much, and it would be torn asunder, leaving nothing to rise but an unthinking brutish puppet, more akin to a zombie than a true vampire.

For the first time, Janos truly looked upon the ruin Raziel had laid at his feet. Vorador had ceased to breathe, his gaze was glassy, blood matted his beard. If he had been handsome once, Vorador was no longer. Janos dared not dwell upon the enormity of this act -- to transfer the curse--swallowed heavily, and lifted his hands as if to comply, then paused. His talons lacked a cutting edge. He thought of biting his tongue -- but no, there was a small dagger at his belt, and he reached for it.

A hand descended hard on Janos' shoulder. Chaika, regal and robed in the black and silver of his office, as sternly final as the pillar over which he had Guardianship, spoke. "You must not do this."

"He must!" Raziel snapped, glaring at the Death Guardian who dared delay them. There were more shocked gasps from the other attending Ancients. To gainsay a Guardian so! Even if he were the Divine Benefactor... "There is no time! If we delay, the paradox will rip our future asunder--and there is no surety that anything we recognize will take its place!"

As if hastened by Raziel's words, the time distortion pulsed again, and this time the lapping wave caught at the corners of Raziel's memory, at his mind, an eroding tide. Was this what Kain had felt, in those first moments, as the shuffling weight of History poised at last to settle into a new order? The Reaver's sonic cry rose to a howl, a malestrom, as the world warped around its singularity.

Through that chaos, Chaika's rasp-dry voice cut like a knife. "Death is the will of God. You will damn us all."

Janos' eyes sought Raziel. He reached across his body, drew the knife from his leather casing. The dagger's blade, perhaps intended for paring quill pens, was no longer than a human's finger, but its edge was not lacking. Janos closed his hand around it, and the scent of the blood that welled up was like the heart of magic itself. He lifted his dripping fist over Vorador's body, even as Chaika hissed his protest, tensing to drag Janos back bodily.

Raziel was on his feet in a moment, stepping across Vorador's cooling form to bar Chaika's attempt, catching one wrist with unnatural strength. This was no time for philosphy!

"You are the one who would damn us with your blindness!" he hissed. "Vorador will die, I can assure you. It may not be as soon as your Pillar would like, but his death will come just the same. In this, he is no different from any other creature upon this world." There was a true irony in such words being spoken by the sole creature in Nosgoth that had been set outside of death ... but Chaika hardly needed to know such things. Especially not at this moment. "Do not interfere--unless you believe the concerns of your Pillar's domain should outstrip that of Time, or Nature, or even Balance itself!"

The Ancients around them cried out in confusion and dismay, some of them starting forward, only to pause or be pulled back by their brethern. For the Death Guardian, paladin of the most sacred of rites, to lay hand upon the Reaver guardian -- and for the Divine Benefactor to stop him so! It was unheard of! And even as Raziel spoke, Janos moved to complete his heresy. The blood on his sky blue skin seemed black in the diffuse light. He placed his hand firmly upon Vorador's chest.

For a long, long moment, nothing happened. Chaika drew rasping breath in horror, his fist clenched where Raziel gripped it, his eyes drawn inexorably to the tableau before him.

But blood called blood. And, gradually, the curse spread, devouring before it, spreading into dying blood, seeping into the deep wound around the rebel's dagger. The contagion began to take hold.

The Reaver fell silent, and around Raziel, the world righted itself.

Releasing Chaika, Raziel turned to Janos, relieved that his desperate gamble had paid off. Still, there was more to raising a fledge than just the daubing of blood.

"Reach out to Vorador, Janos," he said quietly, urgently, not wishing to break the Ancient's focus. Without the dizzying effects of an incipient paradox, it should be easier for Janos to concentrate upon the delicate task before him. "Draw his soul, his mind, back to you. He will take a portion of your power as his own ..." _...and he will live. He will live a long time, and change much ... and in so doing, safeguard the future._

Under Janos' hand, Vorador's body shuddered as the vampiric curse took hold. If the Ancient hesitated, or waited too long, the corpse would still rise--but there would be nothing recognizeable left of the arrogant smith he had known.

Janos' brow furrowed, and he nearly withdrew his hand as the body shivered under it, a mutational tremoring. Within, the affliction was speading with increasing rapidity. Tissues fed upon themselves, fueling the changes dictated by Hylden sorcery: fibres of muscle thickened, sinews grew elastic beyond mortal bounds, the fine threads of nerves were stripped of their enshroudings and recast anew. "I do not..." sense anything, Janos started to say, but then, suddenly, he did -- a gossamer beating at the margin of his mindscape, a feathered serpent in its flight, all silver and green. It was lovely, and it was receding, and without thinking, Janos reached for it.

Vorador's corpse abruply gasped for the air it would never again need.

"No!" A chill upwelling ghosted the length of Raziel's spine, a sephulcular rising, a deathly call. Chaika stepped back, his staff held between his body and Raziel's -- and the half-made vampire behind him. "The madness of a heretic -- of a false prophet! Of an impostor!"

"Madness? Tell me this, then--who shall safeguard your Pillars, once the last Ancient has chosen to return to your God?" Raziel growled, standing fast between the angry Guardian and Janos. "Will you commend them to the grasping hands of the humans?"

He stepped forward--and Chaika stepped back, giving ground instinctively despite his indignation. "I care not what you believe to be blasphemy, Guardian. Janos is now father to a new race, as he was fated to be; and I shall not allow you to endanger either of them!" In answer to that upwelling of power, Raziel let the first ghostly flicker of the wraithblade course down his arm. It was a calculated risk, to be sure--and on the altar, the Reaver blade roused again, keening as it sensed its twin.

The surrounding Ancients were silent now, their dismay and shock writ plain on every face. Chaika's eyes narrowed, his gaze flicked to the resonating Reaver, then back to Raziel. "The pillars select their guardians. Not I... and certainly not you." He lifted his staff, and the cold dampness of death seemed to rise from the very stones of the cathedral.

Janos seemed not to notice either the changes before him, or the conflict around him -- his eyes were closed, sweat beaded on his brow. Grasping that gossamer slip of soulstuff was easy; it fluttered betwixt his talons, just as the Divine One had said. But drawing it back, as he guessed he must, was... seemingly impossible, like bearing up a drowning and panicked swimmer, like trying to draw back the tide. The magical weave ought to have required the lightest of touches, yet it drew upon power in great gulps. Every small gain was hard-won. The soulstuff struggled, its wingtips hissing against bindings made too thick, too rough for their purpose.

Even as he bent to refining those strands, Janos gasped, his eyes opening wide, his head thrown back, as... something else, another force, abruptly seized the captive soul. His voice was a bare whisper. "Raziel!"

Raziel turned at the cry, immediately sensing the wrongness in the air. Chaika's interference, no doubt--and short of killing the Guardian, or attempting to knock him senseless, Raziel did not know how to stop him.

Siring a fledgling vampire was a solitary pursuit--one that required a singular amount of power and focus. Even with the guidance of an elder vampire, as Kain had once guided him, ultimately success or failure always came down to the ability of the Sire, and no other. Yet Raziel could not let Janos flounder against such an unnatural riptide alone.

Settling taloned hands upon Janos' shoulders, he threw out his own power, letting his aura expand outward like a dark stormfront as he reached for the soul held so precariously in Janos' grasp. In any other time and place, the press of his power would have been overwhelming. Janos' own, however, was nearly a match, a blue-shot purity of purpose that held its own like lightning through the clouds. It was an unfamiliar battle, to struggle so over a single soul--but Raziel did his best to shield Janos and lend him strength, even as the Death Guardian's otherworldly magic rose up about them both.

The sudden buffering wave of Raziel's energy was itself distracting, strange... but like the drawing of a thick curtain, it muted the external, muffled Janos' senses until he heard not the gasps and cries around him, saw not the pall of rising death, felt not the anguish of the onlookers. The world was nothing but the soul in his grasp, the hollow into which it seemed as if it must fit... and the Divine One.

With the equation simplified like this, the solution suddenly seemed obvious. The corpse was no different from a waiting soul-hungry weapon, empty of its charging spirit. And Janos knew the making of those bindings. Drawing upon the energies cloaking him as well as his own, the Ancient eased the captive soul into place, felt it click into its home, as tightly seated as if it belonged there. Before the soulstuff could break free, he folded over layers of his own power and began to stitch the soul into place, spooling out wires of molten gold energy to pin it down.

To Chaika, it seemed as if the scene before him had all but dropped from this plane -- he could sense the tethered soul dimly, and it should have been bound beneath the rule of the Pillar of Death. But Chaika was new to his calling, and there was no time now to determine how Raziel's alien crafting might be overcome. Glowering at Raziel's turned back, Chaika reached for the Reaver's hilt.

The Reaver came easily to his hand, unwarded and hungry. Even though Raziel's desperate focus upon Janos, he could feel it at his back, keening, pulling at the air as it hungered for Raziel's blood ...

And then Shamgar's hand, liberally smeared with gore, clamped around Chaika's wrist. "You would compound madness with madness, Chaika? The Reaver is not yours to wield--and certainly not like this!" In contrast to the Death Guardian's slender, immaculately robed form, Shamgar was dishevelled--armor stained with blood and robes twisted in disarray from the fast, hard flight back to the cathedral, Heartseeker standing tall in his other hand. In that moment, he seemed much more akin to Raziel than to his Ancient brethren, utterly a warrior, and the embodiment of Conflict.

Underneath Raziel's hands, Janos' desperate drawing of power eased, slowing to a trickle. There was no desperate undertow now, threatening to sweep Vorador's soul from their combined grasp ... and between one moment and the next, the first fledgling vampire stirred, blinking open golden eyes.

Sensation hissed, burned, along nerves still seizing with the paroxysms of death, bearing a brilliance of perception, of awareness, shocking to the core after Vorador's deep draught of the silent void. Vorador -- a name, his? Oh yes, it was his, and ownership was a sweetness he could feel in his mouth, roll across his tongue. Or rather, he could if only his mouth was not blistering, desiccated, subsumed with a sense of dryness, as if it had been packed with sand and ashes. Gasping -- and the feel of every tiny channel of his lungs filling with air would have been utterly entrancing, were it not for the arid ravaging -- Vorador gagged, trying to clear the maddening substance from his mouth. But there was nothing there.

He could smell something, though.

Something wet, and thick, something which promised to scourge away the dry grit in his mouth and in his muscles. Senseless shafts of light resolved themsleves into blue and -- red. But such a red! It was carmine, incandescent to eyes already adapted to pick that color out above all others. Without quite understanding how, Vorador twisted his feet beneath himself and *moved*, crossing a dozen feet in a single violent bound, the twisted fabric bonds that still wrapped his limbs tearing as if they were but tissue.

"The Reaver returns to God that which is His du -- arrgh!" Chaika tried to jerk back as the... the unliving creature crashed into them, but still caught fast by Shamgar's iron fist, he managed only to drop the Reaver. Howling, the blade struck the marble tiles, even the small force of its fall serving to drive its cutting edges several inches into stone. Shamgar hissed, more in surprise than pain, as the golden-eyed corpse bit at his already-bloodied arm with short but sharp incisors. Releasing Chaika, he backhanded the zombie-thing to the floor and brought Heartseeker to bear.

Ancients cried out shrilly in horror at the undead thing in their midst, scattering like a great dark-winged flock. Chaika recoiled, and Shamgar drew back his arm, preparing to strike--

\--and Raziel stepped coolly between him and his intended target. "My gratitude, Shamgar, for your assistance," he said calmly, and seized the growling creature. The fledgling that had been Vorador thrashed in his grip, twisting with unnatural strength in an attempt to sink his teeth into Raziel's armored flesh. Raziel blocked the fledge's lunge with the ease of long practice, shifting one taloned hand to grip him at the nape of the neck. Carrying him thus, as if the maddened vampire were an errant puppy, Raziel carried him over and forced him to the floor before his Sire.

"It is blood that he craves, as all fledges do," he said to Janos, his words pitched to carry to the others as well. "Will you honor him by gifting him with the blood of his Maker?" The Ancients were so fragile compared to their descendants--Raziel would have to watch that Vorador did not maim his unprepared Sire. At least until Janos had a better understanding of this new creature's strength.

Janos, still half-stunned by the power he had drawn and the enormity of his deed, scarce had time to register the creature's disappearance when Raziel dragged it back again. The... Vorador was a ruin of blood, ashes, dust, and gore, its clothes were tattered by talons and rough treatment. But its gaze, when they met his... it was like looking into a mirror. There was recognition there, and at first Janos assumed the creature recalled the long hours they had together spent at the forge, perfecting blade after blade against the Hylden menace. But no, this was something different; something primal.

What had he done? And what was this knot of warmth, of recognition in turn, he felt for the creature? Raziel had named it a 'fledge', but it was nothing like one of the Ancients' fledglings. Aside from the clearly human nature of its hands, feet, and skin, the feel of the creature was thick with the residue of the heretical rite Janos had just completed. It should have revolted him. And yet... there was something about it, something that commanded Janos' attention.

It would have been an easier emotion to identify if the... if Vorador were not presently engaged in hissing at him like a disturbed snake.

Glancing at Raziel for confirmation, Janos looked to a few of the surrounding Ancients. His voice, he was startled to discover, did not shake. "Retrieve for me several chalices from the bloodfountains," he requested, with a quiet assurance he did not feel. And against his better judgement, Janos gingerly extended his cut hand, the wound still seeping.

Vorador lunged for him.

Raziel allowed him to seize Janos' hand--but when the fledge would have used it as a lever to yank his prey downward for a killing bite, he curbed Vorador's enthusiasm with inexorable strength. The fledgling snarled at him, so driven by instinct that there was no room for fear, but then bent his head downward and bit into the hand he still held captive, drinking with desperate greed.

"The danger will abate once he is sated," Raziel said quietly over the inelegant sounds of Vorador's hunger. "And he should be more attentive to your commands, though it is unlikely he will listen to any other for a time. He will think and act as a child, with no thought for the future ...."

"A child? Say rather a beast!" Chaika interjected, having regained some part of his composure and his indignation. "This is an abomination, Janos! To perpetuate the Curse in such a fashion is madness--you must destroy it!"

Shamgar turned on his fellow Guardian. "So sayeth the one who brought these circumstances upon us," he growled, though it was clear from his pale-knuckled grip on his weapon that he was little more pleased by the scene before him than Chaika.

The death Guardian's visage darkened. His words were a low and measured grating. "Your suspicions, and your anger, are misplaced. Your own pillar should have furnished you warning enough, for will not a cornered and tormented animal, no matter how tame, bite?" Chaika lifted a hand, and a familliar glow built around it. "Look you to the south," the Guardian hissed, and vanished into the subtle glow of teleportation, magics which few of the Ancients seemed to know.

Raziel was adept at distinguishing lie from truth by scent alone, by the minute changes in chemistry of the breath, the conductivity of the skin. But the Ancients were new creatures, their biology subtly different, and that made observation -- howeversomuch was possible in a very limited few moments -- far more difficult. However, there was likely to be but one conflict to which Chaika referred: the ravages of Raziel's own clan in their passage.

Janos' face was carefully blank as he watched the creature of his making suckling at the wound across his palm, short new fangs stabbing indiscriminately through tendon and sinew. A healer would have to attend him, if Janos were to have any use of the hand anytime soon. A skid of cloven hooves on marble announced the arrival of one of several acolytes whom he had dispatched, and Janos reached out as well as he was able to take from him a plain chalice. The other Ancient held it at arm's length, reluctant to move too close, and some of the thin red liquid spilled down the side, coating Janos' free hand. Grip firm, careful not to waste any more, Janos pressed the rim of the cup to Vorador's mouth, letting some of the earthblood trickle along with his own. "Drink, cr -- Vorador. Calm yourself, and be easy. There is nourishment here aplenty."

The Ancients' obvious loathing for the creature he and Janos had wrought was--disturbing. Intellectually, Raziel knew that this cursed race so in love with their God that they were willing to die rather than suffer immortality had been likely to reject the idea of a human-born vampire. But when Raziel looked upon Vorador, he saw naught but a new-made fledgling, the barest beginning of possibility, of strength and a power that could stretch out over the ages; a creature in need of protection and guidance. It was ... difficult to see what would make the Ancients recoil so from the soft newborn that knelt at Janos' feet.

The blood that trickled down from the chalice was hardly as potent or as rich as that of his Sire--but the quantity was much greater, and more easily gotten. In his haste to fill the gnawing cold left behind by his resurrection, Vorador allowed himself to be lured away from the sweet taste of Janos' blood, lapping first at the trickle over his Sire's azure skin, then pulling forward, wrapping hands about the vessel to pull it further downward and drink greedily. It proved to be the first of many before the fledgling was finally sated. Crouched at his Sire's feet and licking his lips absently, the new-made Vorador looked about him with an uncomprehending gaze, unheeding of his bloodstained appearance.

Raziel had released him once it became apparent the fledgling no longer intended to attack the nearest moving prey he saw. Now he moved to Janos' side, inspecting the Ancient's injured hand. "A neat bite, for a fledgling," he remarked approvingly. "He did not tear the flesh unduly. Such restraint, especially given the wounds he bore, is most promising." It might well be that a vampire sired by an Ancient and free of the Taint was ... calmer. For Janos' sake, he hoped it was so.

Janos glanced to Raziel, his expression carefully guarded for the sake of the watchers. This -- *this* was a neat bite? The gash had clotted quite quickly, but the twin punctures continued to seep, for every movement of the deeply damaged tendons broke anew the reforming connections. Still, this was not the place to make complaint, lest he instill yet more fear in his fellow Ancients, and Janos closed his hand over the wound as well as he could, and nodded as if in agreement.

Shock and soul-deep exhaustion, more than bloodloss, had rendered him lightheaded, but looking down at the... at Vorador made the disorientation still worse. He could see - could feel - far more in that bright golden gaze than he should. Janos had never been particularly skilled in the arts of empathy, which were difficult to apply to humans anyway, so alien were their perceptions and their cognitive abilities. And yet he could read the thing that inhabited Vorador's body, could sense the bold, simple lines of its desires as if they were strokes upon a blank page.

Foremost was adoration, worshipful, an intensity of reverence nearly painful to behold. Then, confusion, discomfort - and Vorador spat into his palm a single blunt incisor, displaced by one of his still-emerging fangs. The creature inspected the blunt ivory tooth, sniffed it, then, disinterested, discarded it absently to the no-longer pristine floor. Then his gaze drifted to Raziel, attracted perhaps by the red of his cape and the maroon of layers of drying blood. Though the fledgling sensed the elder vampire's aura, that pressing nimbus of darksome power and incomprehensible age, the neonate clearly knew not what it signified. Janos watched intention form and solidify even before Vorador's muscles began to tense.

 _Stay where you are,_ Janos sent, carefully tuning the Whisper for one receiver alone, and found the link between his mind and the creature's almost absurdly easy to make, as if the channel had already been carved out, prepared for the contact.

Vorador recoiled, attention drawn promptly back to his Sire, though it wandered soon enough. Janos exhaled slowly. At least the... Vorador was responsive to command -- not unlike a golem, perhaps -- and Janos could issue directives in a manner that would escape the notice of most. That might improve the creature's acceptability to other Ancients. The Razielim 'fledgling' had, by all reports, been a most disruptive being. Gathering himself, Janos looked to the clustered Ancients. "I thank you all for your presence at this... auspicious event," he said calmly. "But your assistance is no longer required. Please inform your kin and kith that the matter is settled. And..." he glanced at Vorador, who had drawn his fingertips through the gore upon the ground... and was licking his digits clean. "...have the baths prepared and heated."

Janos looked to Raziel. _How much of Vorador's character remains within his body?_

Raziel surpressed a flinch as he remembered the Ancients' habit of bathing in water. To submerge a fledgling in that deadly substance ... it seemed he would need to tutor Janos in the raising of this need breed of vampire. Even so, Raziel feared that mistakes would still be made, for as important as Vorador was, Raziel had no intention of usurping the authority of his Sire, even if his other duties permitted it.

 _The Vorador you have known is still before you,_ he replied. He did his best to touch only Janos' mind with his answers. _His character has simply been ... subsumed for a time by the needs of this new existence. As he learns what it means to be vampire, he will remember more of what he was, and what you are--though his memories of being human may be fogged and indistinct._ Raziel hesitated, picking his next words with utmost care. _At this moment, Vorador's immortal existence is a fragile thing. He will be stronger than he was, but in all other things he remains vulnerable. He must be kept safe from sunlight, from fire and water. His ability to heal is only somewhat better than that of a human; his skin is still soft and easy to pierce._

 _His sole protection is you, Janos. From his own folly, and from the dangers of the world._

Janos was no novice to the demands of his office or his God. He would live millenia past his brethren, in pursuit of a duty beyond all reason; he would by his own hand carry out the murders of the last of his kind. And yet, Raziel still read shock in his sudden stillness, the widening of his eyes. Was this act of direst sacrilige not sufficient? What precisely was he to do? Keep the creature as some manner of pet, or invalid, until it developed the purpose to which it was heir, regained the memories that had fled?

And what was this injunction against sunlight -- or water? Raziel himself did not seem to require air, save to speak, which had been a passing strange observation. But Vorador was breathing, at present. Janos certainly did not wish to drown Vorador, after such efforts were expended to... resurrect him. Yet nor could the creature be permitted to run about like this, filthy, bloody, and in tatters. Perhaps one of the shallow pools....

 _You will not be taking charge of Vorador, then?_ Janos sent at last, and found as he did that the notion of being far separated from the thing... was not so attractive as it should have been.

Raziel blinked in surprise. _Take charge ...? No, Janos, you are his Sire, and it is you that he will heed. I could not interfere, even if I wished to._ He was not even Vorador's line-Sire, to impose his will in such a manner; only the most tenuous thread of power linked their disparate lines through Kain's possession of the Heart of Darkness. _I will, however, aid you to the best of my ability, if you wish it. There are only a few surviving fledges among the Clan, of various ages; but I can arrange for you to meet with them, and to speak with their Sires, so that you may know better what to expect._

 _I.... that will be of assistance, yes,_ Janos replied, looking down upon what he had wrought. _But for the time being... we must keep him fed? Shall he soon develop the sense to keep from drowning?_

Around them, the crowd was thinning; though all the Ancients were clearly reluctant to depart, Shamgar's voice and hand directed them quite firmly. At the periphery of Raziel's vision, the Conflict Guardian spoke quietly to a pair of elaborately armored temple guards, who bowed and departed upon some task, their spears in hand.

A new thread touched upon Raziel's mind, this one frigid, Stygian with power and turbulent with pique. _Am I to do anything with this imbroglio you have left behind?_

 _...drowning?_ Raziel frowned, only belatedly realizing his error. The Ancients had no fear of water; no conception of what it would do to a creature like Vorador. _Fed, yes, it will keep him from hunting ... but you must not--_ Tarrant's Whisper was an unwelcome intrusion, and Raziel redirected his attentions briefly. _Imbroglio? Surely you have the werewithal to deal with any remaining human survivors?_ Raziel sent acerbically. What manner of folly was this? A vampire of Tarrant's stature could do as he pleased with such ragged and thoroughly beaten creatures; Raziel cared not for their fate, and indeed would prefer there be no survivors bearing tales of what had occurred this eve.

 _Not the mortals,_ Tarrant's Whisper was a frigid northern blast, _but rather your enmaddened... *handmaiden.*_ And enmaddened she was in truth, for she had attacked even Tarrant, when he went to dispose of any survivors. Slaying her would, Tarrant was certain, have been a simple task -- and a most pleasurable one. But incapacitating the fool creature was another matter. The alien confines of the Hylden chamber powerfully warped and disrupted the lines Tarrant employed to fuel his magery, and the Ancient was damnably resistant to magic anyway. Perhaps if he struck the she-angel about the head....

 _Must not wha--_ Janos began, and then cut off abruptly as Vorador pushed himself to stand upright, still a little unsteady. His chin was even with the top of Janos' head, and though age and hedonism had stripped him of some bulk, he was still twice Janos' mass, dense with muscles built by long hours in the smithy. Through the tatters of his clothes, ink was starkly visible upon his skin -- a dragon, coiled upon itself, resembling nothing so much as the creature Vorador would one day become. Curious and intensely aware, Vorador stepped forward. Janos swallowed.

 _...handmaiden?_ It took a moment for Raziel to discern Tarrant's meaning. _She is lost to the bloodrage? I do not see the difficulty--if there is nothing left to kill, leave her be for a time, and she should return to her senses._ It was strange, given that Gana had not seemed to take any great injury; but then, younger vampires were far more susceptible to falling to berserker fury that was the bloodrage than their elders. Perhaps it was also so with the Ancients?

Raziel tensed as Vorador moved, ready to intervene should the creature attempt to offer any violence towards his Sire. But the new-made vampire, for all his intimidating bulk, seemed oddly calm; far more calm than a Razielim fledge would have been, in truth. Golden eyes were focused upon Janos, fascinated--and then one hand, scarred and calloused still from the forge, reached outward to touch the ebony feathers of Janos' nearer wing.

*Soft.* Oh, soft and oil-silken and smooth and strong and sticky under Vorador's palm, the textural richness so intensely novel it was like holding fire in the cup of his hand. Sticky? Oh, not exactly -- for the tackyness came from the red on Vorador's own palm, from the delicious, fragrant crimson. Deliciousness on the feather -- scent and taste and texture all together, sensory adornments of the finest order: ah, it was perfect, it was meant to be! Once he had coated them all, all the glistening black feathers (and each one was as exactly shaped as the obsidian blade-leaf of a long hunting pike, gold scrollwork up the shaft, the spear weighted to be used from above so that it would plummet down like a falling star, but where had he left the gold leaf? Was it still in the topmost sliding drawer?) once he had them all coated, it would be... he would make something. From them. Make something from the sticky fragrant silken beauty that was so soft. Vorador wasn't certain what that meant, precisely -- to make, to construct, to forge. But the thought pleased him anyway, pleased him deeply.

Janos trembled, very faintly, as Vorador laid his roughly-callused, five-fingered hand -- still warm, but rapidly cooling -- upon him. He knew intellectually that the creature was no different from any other soul-imbued weapon; he had Raziel's assurance that Vorador's soul would eventually rejoin the Wheel. Vorador's essence was only caught for a time, encased in flesh just as others were in steel. And yet, something about this physical shell *felt* different... felt nothing like a sentient weapon, but rather hinted of the taste of quartz and ocher, of the scent of heat and tortured metal and steam. It was distinctive; Janos felt he could find the... Vorador anywhere. Perhaps it was a product of the Curse, or even the Curse itself? Whatever its origins, it was unsettling, alien, and when Vorador's gore-stained hand closed on several feathers, he could not keep from jerking his wing fastidiously away. He winced as several feathers came loose.

Instintively alert to the sight, scent, and sense of his Sire's discomfort, Vorador snarled, cast unsteadily about, seeking whatever was dangerous enough to injure his soft-silky-delectable-radiant. There was nearby only one other figure, also fascinating, aromatic with crimson and russet and burgundy, but paler underneath. Vorador hesitated, thoroughly confused, and disliking the sensation. He wondered if the voice (so very familiar) inside his head would come back. Two long flight feathers drifted unnoticed from his hand.

Tarrant's sending was less irate, and considerably more interested. _You wish to wait... until the Ancients finish with her?_ A short pause. Two incoming Ancients were little more than a minute away, and their mindscapes were tense with saddened determination -- but the city was full of unshielded Whispers, and picking distant ones from the cacophany was difficult. Still, it had been easy enough to overhear the one-sided Whispers from Shamgar to the guardswoman. His resigned intention seemed quite clear. Which would be a waste -- unless of course he, Tarrant, performed the deed. _I shall finish her, instead._

A scuff of cloven foot on thoroughly-stained marble announced Shamgar's presence beside Raziel. The Conflict Guardian kept a wary eye on Janos'... creation. It no longer appeared aggressive, and Janos and Raziel had evidently ceased to discuss its fate. "A word with you, Divine One." He paused. "I shall, naturally, issue you with a replacement guard -- one possessed of greater experience and self-control. However...."

 _Finish her--?_ Interrupted by Shamgar, Raziel turned, forboding prickling down his spine. It felt as if events were rapidly spiralling beyond his control; a sensation with which he was all too familiar, and not one he relished.

"What are you--" His thoughts raced as he joined together the pieces of this puzzle, and found he little liked the shape they made. "Gana. You ordered her execution?" Shamgar's grim expression gave Raziel all the confirmation he needed, even if he did not yet understand why. "For what crime--" Raziel cut himself short, his customary caution evaporating in the heat of exasperated anger. First Vorador, then Chaika's interference, and now this! "It does not matter. Call them off, Shamgar." It was unmistakably an order.

Shamgar stiffened, insulted pride and deference warring for dominance. "... what? I cannot. She--"

Raziel growled, and spun away. He had not thought to set a teleportation endpoint before he had brought Vorador here--not that it would likely have been successful in any case, with the Hylden glyphs there to warp and twist his magic. Now it seemed that Gana was to pay for his oversight ....

"Janos!" The Ancient started a little at the sound of his name, his normal impenetrable composure somewhat ruffled as he suffered his fledgling's attentions. "I leave Vorador to you. If you must, bring him to water, and allow him to touch--you will soon see the truth of the matter." It would be a harsh lesson, he knew, but Raziel no longer had time for gentleness.

Unfolding his wings, he leaped into the air, heading unerringly towards the open vaults above. _Tarrant. How close are her executioners?_ He could ask the Neocount to intervene; however, he had learned that such requests usually were not granted without ... consequences. Usually gory ones.

 _They are within view._ Tarrant's whisper was a chill along the spine.

"--is unreachable, is lost!" Shamgar finished uselessly, his talons tightening upon his spear as Raziel fled the cathedral, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the gusting wind of takeoff. Flight within the temple itself was most certainly not adviseable, and he tensed as the Divine One approached the pillared arches that framed a great bank of windows -- and then darted between them, his smaller, leathery wings affording him an agility in the air that few could match without the aid of magery. Shamgar exhaled hard. Interrupt not the Divine One, should he arrive, he Whispered unto the guards whom he had dispatched upon their unpleasant duty, ...but assist him, should the enmaddened one make an attempt to slay him. As she surely would. He shook his head in disgust and looked once more to Janos and the... creature.

Vorador looked between the two Guardians. The pale one was gone, which was saddening. However, there was that spear -- strangely familiar, when so little else was -- and also his soft-silky-delectable-radiant. Caught between the desire to further examine both, Vorador shifted his weight anxiously. Then he caught sight of a discarded goblet at his feet. Bending, he picked it up, checked to see if there was much of the thin, but still rubied and sweet, liquid left. There wasn't, but he ran a finger around the inside to capture what drops remained, thrumming a deep rumble-growl.

Janos closed his eyes momentarily, struck by a realization -- how did he expect to have gotten the... to get Vorador up to the baths, in any case? It had no wings of any kind. Nor talons, nor -- no. He would deal with one matter at a time. He looked to the acolytes, who were yet clustered, both fearful and fascinated, against the wall. "You have heard the Divine One," he said, moving carefully to where the Reaver had fallen and, reverently, closing his good hand around the hilt. His flesh tingled as the spilled font-blood was wicked away by the metal of the hilt, vanishing into the blade's body. Very carefully, Janos lifted the weapon back into its cradling cask, and then folded his hands gingerly inside the sleeves of his robe. "His orders are to have basins of water brought. Send them to... the first storeroom of the north wing." The north wing had been closed for some time as the population of the cathedral continued to decline -- few Ancients frequented the area. Less sunlight reached the area, and there was a bloodfountain there, if Janos recalled correctly, though it might need restarting. And the storeroom had a solid door...

...with a heavy, external bolt.

The cathedral was much like its human-built brethren, built tall and graceful, with a soaring, vaulted roof ribbed with buttresses. The Ancients' work however was finer, with none of the imperfections of design that caused so many of the humans' attempts to collapse prematurely. It had also been built with the needs of a winged race in mind, the upper levels just as functional as the lower. The brilliant stained glass of the upper windows framed archways and platforms never intended for the use of earthbound creatures, and it was to one of those half-open portals that Raziel now aimed.

The broad-winged Ancients, mindful of fragile wingtips, normally landed in order to make their entrance into the building proper. Raziel, in his haste, simply dived for the narrow aperture. With wings drawn close, he made it through--whipping past the startled form of a newly-arrived acolyte, who tumbled backwards with an undignified squawk. Raziel paid no heed, his wings beating hard against the air as he flew fast and true to the humble environs of the city below, chasing Gana's would-be executioners.

The light changed, the sounds changed -- tasteful pastels that highlighted carvings and the regal echoing of space and power giving way to cold midnight blues, the muted sursurrus of air and darkness. The very quality of the air changed underwing, as if Raziel passed rapidly through a field that kept at bay any vagrancies of wind or weather. And indeed, a sudden gust plucked at Raziel, threatened to drive him against the unforgiving stone of the cathedral walls, before they fell away behind him into the darkness like a cloak, cast off by the driving force of his wings.

Under him, great swaths of the city lay dark and still, the magelights that suggested habitation clustered like outposts. The Neocount's aura shone chill purple, a pressure against the mind, a beacon to Raziel's senses.

The flight was not a long one, and Raziel's speed was very great -- yet even still, he arrived after the pair of Ancient guardsmen. Clotheslines were yet strung thickly over most of the plaza, but there were great rents now, where the Ancients had carved through with easy sweeps of their spears, as if the tough twisted hemp were nothing more than spiderweb. The open space was much changed from the last time Raziel had seen it: bodies littered the ground, stonework lay crumbling or destroyed outright, a layer of slippery frost coated the cobblestones. Tarrant rose from his crouch near one still-twitching body, where evidently he'd been enjoying the rebel's fear and impending death; his fingers were tipped in blood, but otherwise he was quite pristine. His countenance, however, was not well-pleased.

"Where is she?" Raziel demanded without preamble, landing with a few backwinged strokes. He spared no concern for the impending corpse at the Neocount's feet--his only focus was for a particular winged one he feared might lie somewhere still out of his sight. "Does she still live?"

In the same moment, not waiting for Tarrant's answer, he cast his mind out in the thread of a directed Whisper, seeking Gana, even as he turned to the now much-enlarged entrance the humans' lair. _Answer me, Gana. Where are you?_ He did not expect much answer, if any, from a vampire caught in the grip of bloodrage, especially with no Sire to compel obedience. But any answer at all would tell him she lived.

Tarrant shrugged -- even that gesture elegantly aristocratic on his frame -- unconcerned. What matter was it to him how she died, if he was not the one to have the pleasure of her killing? To be sure, she was Raziel's thrall, and Raziel could therefore dispose of her as he pleased... but such a waste! He gestured disinterestedly towards the dark, body-clogged channel that led down to the Hylden laboratory.

The answer to Raziel's querying Whisper was nothing so complex as words, was little more than the undisciplined bleed-over of hunger and desire and pain, all of them so steeped in hot savory crimson they seemed to drip, to flow. Then, darker, a thread of mindless fury, of directed aggression.

That answer was all the scent-trail Raziel needed. He plunged into the darkness of the tunnel, wraithblade flickering in anticipation upon his arm. Human corpses littered the ground underfoot, rendering it treacherous. Raziel paid little heed to the charnel house stink or the obstructions underfoot, his night-adapted vision more than capable of picking out the clearest path.

It took no time at all to re-emerge into the Hylden chamber--and there he found Gana, held at bay by two Ancient warriors. The guardswoman was covered in crimson gore, blood matting the feathers of her wings and her hair. She snarled, baring fangs in a feral, maddened expression, ignoring her wounds, and lunged for one of Shamgar's chosen executioners.

The more heavily-muscled male Ancient threw up a hand reflexively, but only a harsh blueish crackle, a momentarily shield-like flickering, surrounded his hand. Gana leapt through it unslowed, the air shimmering around around her own outstretched talons -- though whatever enmaddened magics she employed were likewise warped and dampened. Still, she was strong and fast, and at very close quarters the first guard's spear was of little use. Gana gored at his face, her weight bearing them both down to land with a wet-sounding snap upon the executioner's wings. Her fangs sheared shut, a breath away from the other Ancient's throat. With a sharp cry, the second male Ancient raised his spear, its long and elegantly-curved blade limned in a muted, clean white fire.

In a blur of speed, Raziel was there, talons wrapped around the Ancient's arm, holding it in place with immutable strength. "Do not touch her," he snarled. The saturation of the bloodscent in the air, the tang of Gana's rage--it was difficult to hold his own fury and frustration in check.

But Kain's lessons had been hard-learned, and control it Raziel would. He forced the winged vampire backward, and turned. Gana did not notice his presence until Raziel had his talons about her throat, ripping her bodily from her prey. Mindful of her softer flesh, Raziel had to fight to keep razored talons from cutting too deep as the Ancient thrashed, snarling. Her wings flared outward, the impact of one blunt edge sending him reeling back--and then she was upon him.

Her fangs, short and sharp, were at his throat, and Raziel bared his own as he resisted the urge to respond in kind. The Ancient guardswoman was so far gone in the bloodrage that she had not bothered to guard herself from counterattack; one stroke, and Raziel could have disemboweled her.

But her death was not why he was here. He let her bite down, grimacing at the inept attempts to find the vulnerable spots upon his armored skin--and when she struck true, allowed her to drink deep, even as he did his best to sink himself into her mind. He was not her line-Sire, nor was there any spell of fealty between them. The only tie he could use was that of his own blood, potent and rich, as it coursed through her veins.

The Ancient Raziel had shoved away struck the wall, propelled by prodigious strength, but he buffered the impact with talons outstretched and did not lose his grip on his weapon. With a hiss, he pushed off the rune-covered surface, prepared to address this new threat... and came up short at the sight of Raziel. He winced as the raging guardswoman launched herself at the Divine Benefactor... who seemed disinclined to fight her off. "Chosen one!" he gasped, torn between starting forward and obeying Raziel's order. Near him, the second guard slowly began to climb to his feet, one wing hanging limply, his face and forearm gouged with fang-scrapes. But his fist, too, was tight upon his spear.

Gana's second taste of Raziel's blood was as shocking as the first, rich and overwhelming, enmaddening, as if she held the very sun in her mouth. But this time, Gana had already fed deeply, and many times over -- her mind was sluggish with satiation, and little able to resist the careful, finely woven mental incursion. Gradually, fibers of glistening black threaded through the clear blues of her awareness, of her soul: blue like duty, like the shading of the bowl of the sky.

"Hold!" Raziel commanded, one taloned hand outstretched, when it seemed as if the two Ancient warriors would intervene to protect their messiah. The single word echoed in the chamber, as clear and final as the herald-bells of impending battle.

Struggling upright, he ignored Gana's instinctive snarl. One taloned hand curled about the base of her neck, below mantled wings--but only held her in place. The Ancient's mind was a clouded whirl of instinct and madness, made only worse by her unhealed injuries. Yet underneath all of it was Gana's soul--Raziel could feel it, almost taste it as Gana drank deep and his own hunger grew. Closing his eyes, he concentrated upon that thin tendril, Whispering darkly to her unheeding mind. _Remember who you are ..._ There was a subtle shift in her attentions, though her grip upon him never faltered. _You are my vassal, my sentry ... my watcher against enemies in the dark. Heed your lord, Gana, and return to me!_ he commanded.

 _Yess..._ there were traces of a word in that sending, hints of it through the boiling emotion, the vortex of need and blood. But acceptance of the ownership Raziel claimed was clear, for there was nothing of Gana's soul that did not belong unto him; her vow the fateful evening she'd raised her blade against Raziel had later been cemented by ritual bindings.

Gradually, one by one, forms, memories began to coalesce from the chaos. And of these, a single understanding was forefront -- she fought; she was in combat, her hands upon her foe. And though she had held the spear for but few years, she'd fought hand-to-hand far longer. Still disoriented, frightened and in a panic to reach Raziel's side, she bit down harder, wrenched back with fangs, her talons wedged under the edge of hard metal armor, and swept her foot forward to tangle her assailant's and drive him to the ground.

Against a lesser opponent, she would have been successful; but Raziel outmatched her easily in both strength and skill, and stood his ground. Instead he tightened his own grip, bringing up one taloned hand to grip the blood-soaked mass of her hair, their minds so entwined that he could almost feel that painful tug upon his own scalp.

 _I am here,_ he Whispered with enforced calm. Fury or annoyance would only incite Gana's bloodlust further; what she required was for Raziel to stand fast, to be as immutable as the stones of the mountains themselves. _The battle is won, and well-done. My blood is upon your lips, my flesh in your talons--wake, Gana, and acknowledge me in truth._

Even the skin of Raziel's throat was subtly underlaid with plate-like segments of armor, invisible until the surface was broken, and it was they which kept the Ancient's short, sharp fangs from severing entirely the arteries that coursed beneath, from tearing flesh away from spine. Even so, remaining still and stolid while Gana attempted just that was no minor effort of will.

Raziel had commanded her wake, and that was an apt word, for the moment the Ancient's fragmented consciousness focused upon Raziel's sending, she discovered her senses cleared, her mind returned with painful sharpness. But there was more pain that merely that -- scraping-sharp edges were tangled in her hair, a myriad of cuts and bruises rendered her body one solid ache, and a starburst of desperate agony radiated from the thick limb of one wing. All those corporeal concerns, though, were neigh overriden by a glut of sensation so intense it could scarce be described, a rapture that spread deeper with every swallow... with every...

Gana disengaged her fangs, ungently in her haste, and looked for the first time upon what she had wrought -- the damage to Raziel, the remains of the humans, the two dumbstruck Ancient guardsmen. With a low keen of horror and despair, she fell heavily to her knees before the bloodied Emmissary of God.

Raziel's relief as Gana slipped the grasp of the bloodrage turned into confusion. Were her wounds greater than he had seen? Ancients did not have the formidable healing abilities of their undead descendants, that he knew ... His own savaged throat was healing with visible speed, unnoticed, as he went down on one knee himself to touch her wing with cautious talons.

"You fought well and skillfully, Gana." And she had, once leaving aside her initial hesitancy. Which made her inconsolable despair all the more baffling! "Have you taken a mortal wound?" Raziel glanced over at the two hovering guardsmen. "You! Do you have some manner of healing draught upon you?"

Under Raziel's hand, the thick-feathered wing jerked back a little as Gana flinched. Then she caught herself, held the limb steady, steeling herself against righteous retribution. "N -- no, Savior."

The pair of Ancients gaped. The blood that had seeped from Raziel's ruined throat coated his chest, his armor, spattered the floor and smeared the mad one's mouth, and though the Divine Benefactor knelt, he stood in defiance of death. But he surely could not so stand much longer.

The full extent of Raziel's injury could only be seen now, with the mad one out of the way -- and no creature could survive such a wound. Never should the guardsmen have obeyed Raziel's foolish order! Both Ancients fumbled at their belt pouches; the broken-winged one was faster, and despite his dragging limb, darted to Raziel's side, snapping open a glass vial of liquid and emptying it onto a torn fistful of his robe as he moved, taking care this time to keep clear of the maddened one, lest she recover. The plain cotton rag dripped shimmering cyan in the virulent light. The guard ignored Raziel's imperiously outstretched hand -- they could not afford even a moment lost -- and clapped the cloth over Raziel's throat.

"Ah!" Raziel jerked backwards, snarling, as the healing potion seared already-wounded flesh. Such minor magics, thankfully, could not do the same kind of injury that a greater spell of healing would--but the pain was certainly no salve to an already uncertain temper.

He backhanded the cloth away with enough force to send the already-injured warrior a step backwards, clutching his arm. "Not me, you fools! For her!" Raziel growled at both wide-eyed Ancients, his patience now thoroughly spent. Grave injuries only made it easier to slip back into the bloodrage, and Raziel was not all that certain in his ability to call an Ancient back a second time.

"What! For..." the injured, bewildered guardsman slipped in the sticky-thick gore that coated the floor; only his impressive agility kept him from tumbling as he stepped back. The Ancients were generally slow to anger, sometimes absurdly slow by Razielim standards, but this one was evidently more argumentative than most. He lifted his fist -- the one not presently rendered numb and unresponsive by the stunning force of Raziel's blow. "The mad one is a danger, not in any way endangered! Her wounds are not--" he cut off abruptly, confused, as the crackling hiss of holy magic upon undead flesh registered. Raziel's black blood upon the scrap of wetted fabric was sizzling into a fine ash.

The other guard stepped forward. "You wish to heal her... for what purpose? Her soul is already yours." His mouth and body were tense with revulsion -- of the room with its gory coating, and now this... The guardswoman had once raised her spear against the Divine One, and thus was condemned to soul-entrappment. But compared to her present offence, that was as nothing. What more dire punishment could there be?

"Her soul--" Raziel stopped short as the meaning of the guard's words became clear. Death. It was always death--or worse than death, a soul entrapped for eternity inside a blade, forced into bondage more complete than that of any slave. Raziel's own familiarity with such a fate only made it more horrifying, not less, and that these Ancients would speak of it so casually ...

"It is not her soul I require, but her service!" he snarled, fangs bared. "It was I who led us here. I who commanded that she fight at my side against these vermin! What sort of creature do you take me for, that I would demand such a foul punishments for a warrior faithful in their duty?" He thrust out an imperious taloned hand. "Give me the healing draught."

The two guards exchanged glances, but in the face of a direct order, there was little hesitation. The unwounded guard, spear carefully to hand lest the mad one attack once more, reached to place his glistening, rune-wrapped vial in Raziel's razored palm. Still -- "It will do little good," he cautioned, seeming not to fully comprehend Raziel's expression, nor what it portended. "For if there is any awareness left in her, she kneels in expectation of your judgement, not in weakness."

Raziel raised a scornful eyebrow. "You speak as if she is mad. I assure you, she is not--the bloodrage has left her." He turned to Gana, who still knelt miserably upon the befouled floor. "This is true? Do you believe your soul should be forfeit, merely for the sin of following me into battle?"

Gana hesitated. She began to lift her head -- the Divine One's hooves were so soaked in blood they seemed stained, no pale chitin visible; in the virulent light all red seemed black, but Raziel's own spilled vitae was thicker -- and quickly dropped her gaze again. "No, Maitre," she said, voice hoarse. Raziel's question was confusing, for her soul was already in his hands, forfeit years ago. And following him into battle was certainly no sin, but.... "But thereafter, for... for turning upon you."

"Self-sacrificing fools," Raziel snarled, exasperated by the Ancients' apparent stubborn refusal to understand. Gana flinched from his anger, and Raziel's temper, worn to a thread over the events of the last day, snapped. He reached down and hauled her roughly to her feet, ignoring Gana's tiny sounds of distress and the guards' protestations. "On your feet! Are you a warrior or a dog, that you would cringe and abase yourself so?" He thrust the vial into her hands. "Your life and your service still belong to me, woman--and you *will* take the healing draught," Raziel ordered. He favored all three Ancients equally with a scorching glare. "The bloodrage is naught but a passing madness, born of Hunger and injury. Her attack was nothing I did not allow--and I shall not see her condemned for it!"

The room fell to a shocked silence so sudden and stark the low, strange hum emitted by the wall runes could be detected. Something -- probably a stray chunk of gore -- slid down the overturned table to land with a dull splat. Gana's eyes were wide, but the vial in her hand clicked as she thumbed it open and lifted it to drink.

"The... blood-what?" Started the uninjured guard, brow furrowed, and in his clear confusion he was caught utterly unaware by the second, wing-broken Ancient. Face twisted in an old kind of grief -- for if what Raziel claimed was true, what could that imply for those who had long since been forceably returned to God? -- the injured guard shoved his counterpart aside. "What mad deception of a savior are you! Once broken, what beast or tool shall not break again! And what then, when this madness is unleashed upon the unsuspecting? What of the weak, the chil..."

Gana choked on her potion.

"Broken?" Raziel echoed, meeting the guard's dismay with chilly anger. "Is a hawk broken, then, if it wounds its handler in its fear? Is a hound broken, if it is starved and beaten beyond all obedience?" He stalked forward, a narrowed golden gaze never leaving that indignant face. "Is it so unfathomable that vampires would be akin to other predatory beasts? They do what they must to survive--and so too does the bloodrage."

Raziel paused, gauging the depth of the Ancient's dismay. He mastered his temper with some difficulty, and continued, "Among my Clan, it is the elders that ensure such rages will end. Do you deny the evidence of your own eyes?" Left unspoken was that the Ancients had no such elders among them--that all had been stricken by the Curse, young and old alike, and given no Sires, no elder vampires of their line to control their newborn bloodthirsty rages.

"We are not beasts, not humans," it was unclear from the injured guardsman's tone which was worse, "and survival is unequal to the cost of a descent to their level. Can you not understand?" the Ancient stood his ground before Raziel's advance, the flight feathers of his limp wing scraping the gore on the ground. Even if Raziel could restore an Ancient to sanity, what of her soul, and its standing before God? "Your bondservant has fallen to the curse, to the beast, imposed upon her by --"

The second, somewhat slighter guard spoke intently, quietly, in the lilting tongue of the Ancients, the sound of the language strange in such harsh surroundings. He lifted the makeshift bandage the first spearman had used, in his effort to heal the wound at Raziel's throat. A burnt metallic ash dusted from it, though it had ceased to smoke.

The wounded Ancient's stubbornness did nothing to appease Raziel's temper. "If you are so eager to die rather than learn--!" Then the other Ancient spoke, and Raziel stopped short, frowning. He could not comprehend the words, but as Gana gasped, stiffening a little in dismay, he turned a scowling countenance to the second guard. "What is it?"

The more slender guard answered Raziel slowly, formally, as if searching for the words, or perhaps just overcome with his realization. "Vivec has assaulted the Divine One's physical manifestation," he said.

Gana's empty vial, discarded, clinked upon the Hylden-laid flagstones, as the guardswoman crouched to pick up her spear. The carved haft stuck to the gory floor, to the residue left by Raziel's flay devices, but came free with a wet sound. She made as if to move forward, to place herself between Raziel and this newest threat, but paused, uncertain. Which sin, hers or the other Ancient's, took precedence here? "This must be brought... before the priests," she said haltingly, little though she relished the thought of appearing before the clerics stained thusly, body and soul.

The broken-winged Ancient -- Vivec, evidently -- swallowed, his expression cycling rapidly from confusion to denial to horror... to anger. "That is not for such as you to decree, fallen!" he growled, lifting his fist.

"No, it is not." Raziel's words were hard and unadorned. In the face of the Divine One's cold fury, Vivec faltered, his intentions suddenly uncertain.

"It is mine," Raziel continued, turning to face the angry Ancient fully. "Surely the Divine Benefactor has the right to judge any who would presume to trespass against him, does he not?"

"... I ..." Off-balance and angry, Vivec groped for words. He did not wish to die, yet his sin was evident to all. Before he could muster anything in his own defense, Raziel pressed on, unrelenting.

"Your priests would claim your soul is forfeit." He paused, a narrowed golden gaze gauging the depth of the Ancient's fear, and of his resolve. "Do you agree? You loathe and fear the changes thrust upon your people by the Curse--is it your wish to instead be imprisoned eternally within a blade? Or is it the embrace of your god, and your death, that you crave?"

That resolve was buckling under the weight of the Ancient's very evident confusion. Vivec did not cleave to his religion so strongly as many of his kin -- a defect of character that had been called into question before -- and now he lacked that unshakeable pillar of faith and of trust.

In the end, it was Raziel's presence that decided him -- not the vampire lord's nimbus of arcane energies, but rather Raziel's manifest assurance, the authority built over centuries of command and rule. "I would live... Divine One," Vivec said, teeth gritted in pain and humiliation both, explicitly acknowledging Raziel's status, and implicitly Raziel's right to pass whatsoever judgement he pleased.

Raziel's stern expression did not soften, though inwardly he was pleased at the Ancient's choice. A second Ancient vassal--one less wedded with the self-sacrifice seemingly endemic to the species--would aid him greatly in navigating the uncertain shoals of Ancient custom and politics.

"Very well. Then mark this, all of you." Golden eyes swept over the three assembled Ancients, including both those who bore witness as well as the one judged. "I am no priest, to condemn any soul to eternal imprisonment within a blade, much less yours. Likewise, a rotting corpse is of little use to me and worth even less in reparation." Raziel turned, pinning Vivec with an unyielding stare.

"So. My judgment is this: you may wear service to me, and thereby atone for your transgression."

His words dropped like stones into the silence, and Raziel said nothing more, waiting for Vivec's answer. He would not cajole or persuade--and even as the Divine Benefactor, he did not yet have the right to command the Ancient to live. That choice belonged to Vivec alone; submit to Raziel, or give up his life and his freedom to the priests.

Gana looked to Raziel, eyes wide. Who, possessed of their right mind, would exchange a certain place in God's embrace -- for an indefinite period of service? There were some advantages, to be sure, compared to being trapped within a blade or armament. But surely the priests would not damn Vivec to that purgatory for an inadverdant offence. They were merciful, after all. And yet, when Gana herself had unthinkingly brandished arms against the Divine One, there had been no leniency.

Perhaps Vivec held those same considerations in mind, as well; still he hesitated, searching the Divine One's raptor-intent gaze. The term of his service mattered little, for his duties as a temple guard were likewise indeterminate; the possibility that an oath to Raziel might span centuries, not decades, simply did not occur. But was this what it meant to stand by the Savior's side: to be permitted to descend to the level of madness, the 'bloodrage', as Raziel named it? Vivec had been forced to slay his own kind in those first few chaotic months, those who had so fallen. But if he stayed viligent, if he took care, remained strong, perhaps he would never be tempted by that red-rimmed insanity. He had withstood it this long, after all. Slowly Vivec nodded, spoke quietly. "My service is yours, Divine Benefactor... in atonement."

At any other time, Raziel would have required his newest vassal to swear fealty then and there. But this charnel house was hardly suited for a solemn oath, adorned with gore and Hylden runes still glowing sickeningly from the walls. There was also the injuries they had all sustained--while Raziel's had healed, both Vivec and Gana were less resilient, with injured wings that undoubtedly would require a healer's care.

For her part, Gana swallowed heavily. "Savior," she interjected, hesitantly. "The Death Guardian may not be well-pleased by... by this."

Feeling weariness drag at his very bones, Raziel tamped down a flare of temper. "The Death Guardian has not been well-pleased by anything I have done this day," he snapped, suppressing the urge to say something more ... intemperate. Not to mention descriptive. "I assure you, I am more than capable of bearing his displeasure."

Raziel gave one last assessing look over the motley and dismayed group of Ancients; then turned away. "Regardless, it avails us little to linger in this place. We shall go--and should either of you face judgment, you will do so as my vassal."

Gana lowered her gaze. "As you say, Divine One."

And the Ancients followed Raziel from the blood-drenched darkness.


End file.
